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A Panorama of Pittsburgh
at the Frick through 10/5
Learn about Pittsburgh's past by viewing more than 130 printed views of the city.

Meissonier masterpiece
now on view at the Frick
1806, Jena is on view at the Frick through May 31, 2009.

This Sunday is
RADical Day at the Frick
Visit the Frick on 10/5 for a full day of activities and fun!

Rob Rogers discusses
political cartooning on 10/12
The Post-Gazette's award-winning editorial cartoonist will discuss his experiences covering the 2008 presidential campaign and conventions.

Music for Exhibitions
begins new season 11/18
Join Katherine Soroka and Chatham Baroque for an evening of memorable music.

View photos from the 2008 H. C. Frick Horseless Carriage Tour
Twenty-six teams of drivers made it a day of fun.

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November 10, 2007 - February 10, 2008

Organized by the Frick Art & Historical Center, From J.P. Morgan to Henry Clay Frick provides the opportunity to examine a group of bronzes, porcelains and furniture with a most interesting history—they were all acquired from the collection of American financier J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913). Opening November 10 at The Frick Art Museum, the exhibition remains on view through February 2, 2008.

A search of the Frick’s collection identified about seventy objects originally from Morgan’s collections, including a large group of Renaissance and Baroque bronzes, rare Chinese and Meissen porcelains, eighteenth-century French furniture and other fine and decorative arts. Together, these objects tell the story of the intersection of two great collectors—Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919) and J. P. Morgan.

Morgan amassed the majority of his astonishing collection of fine and decorative arts, manuscripts, and other historical materials in the last decade of the nineteenth century, after his father’s death in 1890. In the first years of the twentieth century, he continued to purchase with feverish zeal, eventually assembling a collection unrivalled for breadth and quality. At the time of his death in 1913, it is estimated that the value of his collections amounted to as much as sixty million dollars of his eighty million dollar estate.

A small but significant portion of Morgan’s collection was acquired by Henry Clay Frick, and subsequently those objects that were in his New York home at 70th Street and Fifth Avenue became part of The Frick Collection. Others passed to family, including his daughter Helen Clay Frick, who ultimately brought the objects she inherited to Pittsburgh where they were part of the founding collection of The Frick Art Museum.

Comments Director Bill Bodine, “This exhibition allows the Frick an opportunity to present a wide array of objects from our permanent collection together for the first time, while examining the collecting interests and influence of two of our nation’s preeminent art collectors and cultural benefactors.”

J. P. Morgan: America’s Premier Collector
As a teenager and young adult, John Pierpont Morgan spent a great deal of time in Europe—both convalescing (after a bout of rheumatic fever), and attending school. This experience exposed him to the richness of European history and the remarkable treasures that filled the stately homes of wealthy Europeans. Shortly after graduating from the University of Göttingen, Germany, Morgan began his business career, and for the next decades his rise to prominence in the world of finance proceeded without pause.

Morgan’s collections remained largely in Europe because of customs taxes that would have levied significant tariffs on importing artifacts into the United States. In 1888, Morgan began a long relationship with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and became president of their board in 1904. Over these years, he began to envision his collection at home in the Met, and it was hinted that it would be gifted to the Met if he could avoid the exorbitant customs taxes. Tax laws were changed in 1909, and consequently an immense exhibition was planned for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Morgan did not live to see the opening of what has been called America’s first “blockbuster” exhibition, which included over 4,000 objects from the his collection. Opening in February 1914 and running through May 1916, the exhibition attracted 1,000,000 visitors in 1914 alone.

Morgan’s son, Jack, had the difficult task of determining the fate of his father’s collections. There was no question that many of the items would be donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but, since the bulk of his father’s estate was tied up in the collection, it was necessary to sell some items. The sales were handled through Duveen Brothers, and the galleries at the Met served as a sort of ultimate showroom.

From J. P. Morgan to Henry Clay Frick
One of the biggest public draws of the Morgan exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was the collection of Renaissance and Baroque bronze statuettes, a collection, which had been privately catalogued by Morgan at great expense in 1910. Each bronze was photographed, and the scholarly catalogue entries were written by noted art historian Wilhelm von Bode (1845–1929). A copy of the Bode catalogue Collection of J. Pierpont Morgan: Bronzes of the Renaissance is on loan to the exhibition from the Frick Fine Arts Library at the University of Pittsburgh. This very special 2-volume set is one of three complete sets that art dealer Joseph Duveen gave to Frick as he was planning his bronze purchases. The volumes on loan to the exhibition contain Duveen’s handwritten notations to Frick.

Frick visited the Met exhibition twice—once with Joseph Duveen, and a second time with daughter Helen, specifically to see the famed painting cycle The Progress of Love, by French Rococo artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806). In 1915, Frick contracted with Duveen to purchase the panels for his New York residence, and, since then “the Fragonard Room” has been indelibly associated with The Frick Collection in New York. The Fragonard Room, a painted view as it was installed at the Frick residence, was commissioned by Helen Clay Frick from American artist Walter Gay (1856–1937). Gay specialized in painterly depictions of upper-class interiors, and his views of the Boucher Room and the Living Hall at the Frick Collection are also included in this exhibition, illustrating The Frick Collection in the brief period during which it actually served as a personal residence.

Frick made clear in his 1915 will that he intended his home to become a public museum. Many of the purchases he made from the Morgan estate were carefully selected to create the right domestic setting for experiencing his painting collection. The posthumous Portrait of Mr. Frick in the West Gallery, painted in 1925 by Sir Gerald Kelly (1879-1972), shows Frick in his element—enjoying a cigar amidst his bronzes and accompanied by the likenesses of seventeenth-century royalty as painted by Velasquez and El Greco.

Inspiration and Aspiration
The beautifully rendered Venus with Apple, attributed to Severo Calzetta of Ravenna (Italian, active 1496–1538), is part of the group of bronze statuettes Frick ultimately selected from the estate of J. P. Morgan. During the Renaissance, Venus did not simply symbolize erotic love, but a considerably broader spectrum of values. The art historian E.H. Gombrich has enumerated some of these as charity, magnanimity, liberality, charm, and splendor. An interest in classical antiquity was a central part of the developing humanist ideals that stimulated the Renaissance. The art and literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans inspired philosophers, artists, architects, and patrons. In the Renaissance as in Frick’s time, precious antiquities and contemporary works based on classical themes allowed collectors to exhibit their cultivated taste and progressive values.

The great Florentine sculptor Donatello established a fine art bronze casting tradition in northeastern Italy that lasted for two centuries. Several of his artistic heirs are represented in this exhibition. Working in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, Severo Calzetta of Ravenna is represented in the exhibition by other exquisite examples of antique subjects, such as Neptune and Sea Monster with Shell, in addition to his Venus; Biblical themes, such as St. Michael Weighing Souls, as well as decorative items like the Lamp in the Form of a Satyr’s Head. Decorative objects by his compatriot, Andrea Brisco (1470–1532) include the Circular Tripod Inkstand.

Fine examples from other production centers include Peter Vischer’s Figure of a Man as Candelabrum, cast in Nuremburg and Allesandro Algardi’s Portrait Bust of Pope Innocent X, mid-seventeenth century—the only example of Roman Baroque bronze casting in the collection. The Roman sculptor, Antonio Canova’s Neoclassical influence is displayed by the English sculptor John Gibson’s Hunter and His Dog, created in the mid-nineteenth century.

Collectors like Morgan and Frick prized bronzes for many of the same reasons their Renaissance predecessors did—the bronzes provided decorative embellishment and intellectual pleasure, while demonstrating the good taste and discernment of the owner. As, in different ways do all of the objects on display—from a finely made leather topped writing table (ca. 1780s) by master French furniture maker Martin Carlin, to a pair of impressively large and gorgeously painted eighteenth-century Chinese vases. They embody both the apex of craftsmanship, for their particular time and place, and they represent the aspirations of their various owners as they have passed through the centuries and ended up moving from J. P. Morgan to Henry Clay Frick.

This exhibition represents a deeper involvement with researching the Frick’s permanent collections and presenting them within the fascinating contexts in which they were formed.

GENERAL INFORMATION
The Frick Art & Historical Center is located at 7227 Reynolds Street in Pittsburgh’s Point Breeze neighborhood. Free parking is available in the Frick’s off-street lot or along adjacent streets. The Frick is open 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., Tuesday–Sunday and closed Mondays and major holidays. Admission to the Car and Carriage Museum, Greenhouse, and Playhouse is free.

Docent-led tours of From J.P. Morgan to Henry Clay Frick are available on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. Groups of five or more and those interested in scheduling a tour of the permanent collection are requested to schedule a private tour at an alternate time. The cost for group tours and permanent collection is $7 per person, and reservations must be made one to two weeks in advance. Call (412) 371-0600, 9:00 a.m.–5:00p.m. Monday–Sunday.

Tours of Clayton are available Tuesday through Sunday; reservations are recommended. Admission is $12 for the general public and $10 for students and seniors.

For information and reservations, call 412-371-0600, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., Monday through Sunday.

For further information or images, please contact Greg Langel, Media and Marketing Manager, at 412-371-0600, ext. 524 or glangel@frickart.org.

Click here for information about special events and programs offered in conjunction with the exhibition From J.P. Morgan to Henry Clay Frick.

Sir Gerald Kelly (English, 1879–1972), <i>Portrait of Mr. Frick in the West Gallery,</i> 1925. Oil on canvas. 48 x 40 in. Frick Art & Historical Center.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French, 1725–1805), <i>The Wool Winder,</i> c. 1759. Oil on canvas, 29 3/8 x 24 1/8 in. Purchased by The Frick Collection, 1943. The Frick Collection, New York.

Attributed to Severo Calzetta da Ravenna, (Italian, active 1496–1538), <i>Venus with Apple,</i> early 16th century. Gilt bronze, 101/4 (height) x 3 in. (diameter). Frick Art & Historical Center.

Pair of <i>Famille Rose</i> Vases, China, reign of Ch’ien Lung, 1736–1805. Porcelain, 20 in. (height). Frick Art & Historical Center.

Walter Gay (American, 1856–1937), <i>The Fragonard Room,</i> 1926. Oil on canvas. 191/2 x 251/2 in. Frick Art & Historical Center.