The Frick Collection

Last month I was lucky enough to visit The Frick Collection in New York City. There are so many amazing museums in New York I always feel like I never have time to see it all. If you have even a small amount of free time in New York, I suggest you make the trip. The building alone is well worth the pilgrimage.

The Frick Collection is the personal collection of Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919), a coke and steel magnate. He built a gorgeous, traditional home in 1913 on the Upper East Side. When he died, he left his house and all of the artwork in it to the public.

As of 1995, The Frick Collection has a permanent collection of more than 1,100 works of art from the Renaissance to the late 19th century. Among the works were pieces by Manet, Goya, El Greco, Degas, Monet, Velasquez and more. I have a particular fondness for Boucher, which The Frick Collection has quite a bit of. My favorite works being The Four Seasons, a grouping of four fanciful paintings portraying the four seasons, of course. Winter, Autumn, Spring and Summer. These are thought to have hung in the dressing room of Madame du Barry, Louis XV's mistress.

We also saw an incredible traveling exhibition called Watteau to Degas: French Drawings from the Frits Lugt Collection. Among the drawings was this by Boucher.

Femme debout, vue de dos, vers 1742

Francois Boucher (1703-1770)

Which bears a striking similarilty to a painting I last saw at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid. Inspiration, I presume?

La "toilette", 1742

Fransois Boucher

What I loved most about The Frick Collection was the relative amount of space you had between visitors. No jostling to get the best vantage point, no unruly children. No rush. There is so much to see in such a beautiful environment that the museum cannot help but feel calming.

The Frick Collection

1 East 70th Street

New York, NY 10021

http://www.frick.org/