The Frick Collection, an Illustrated Catalogue, I-II, Paintings, III-IV, Sculpture by John Pope-Hennessy; Anthony F. Radcliffe; Terence W. I. HodgkinsonReview by: Andrew Carnduff RitchieThe Art Bulletin, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Jun., 1971), pp. 265-266Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3048849 .

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The Frick Collection, An Illustrated Catalogue, I-Ii, Paintings, various authors, 1968; III-IV, Sculpture, by John Pope- Hennessy, assisted by Anthony F. Radcliffe, and Terence W. I. Hodgkinson, New York, The Frick

Collection, distributed by Princeton University Press, 1968. $40 each two-part volume.

Until recently catalogues of American art museum collections have been few. The reasons are not far to seek. The collections them- selves have often grown at such a pace that no cataloguer, if one was available, could keep up with the stream of acquisitions. And even when a collection had arrived at a reasonable plateau of

stability, curators have often found themselves too bogged down in administrative and temporary exhibition details to find time for the cataloguing of the permanent collection. When time and research assistance have been found, the often tedious process of

recording all the information on attribution, dating, provenance and condition of works of art has led to years of patient study before a catalogue could be brought to press. Finally, what might be called the "catalogue temperament" is not common to many art historians. To some, cataloguing seems unchallenging as an intellectual exercise. That this is an ill-founded assumption is surely proved by the careful weighing of evidence to be found in the entries to the catalogues of the Frick Collection of paintings and

sculpture here under review. These catalogues are models of their kind. Physically, they are

handsome publications - in typographic design, legibility of type and the high quality of the illustrations. In content they provide both the general reader and the scholar with most of the essential information needed for a fuller appreciation of one of the finest

private collections of paintings and Renaissance bronzes ever assembled in America. This can be said even though admittedly the research in these four volumes is based, as Harry Grier's excel- lent prefaces tell us, on the monumental folio catalogue, An Illustrated Catalogue of the Frick Collection, begun in 1928 and not

completed until 1955. This catalogue was prepared by over twenty scholars, many of international stature. The entries in the present redaction have been reviewed by over thirty American and

European specialists in order to bring the scholarship of the older

catalogue up to date. It is impossible for a single reviewer to make an assessment of the

critical work of over fifty scholars. I must therefore limit myself to some observations on the Frick Collection as a whole.

It was founded by a wealthy American industrialist and finan- cier during the period from the 1890's until his death in 1919. These are the years when what is coming to be called the First Industrial Revolution was reaching its peak and the social disloca-

tions, attendant upon that peak, were felt throughout the Western world in sporadic attempts at revolution and finally World War I.

Interestingly enough, the Wallace Collection in London, which is said to have inspired Mr. Frick to collect as he did, was formed

during and after the period of the French Revolution. The point may be here that as the social and economic structures of Europe began to dissolve, it became more and more possible to relocate works of art from Europe to America, or as in Wallace's case,

from the Continent to England. After Mr. Frick's death the pace of relocation of art works quickened between World Wars and

during the international depression of the thirties, and, as everyone knows, it has reached almost feverish proportions in auction houses in recent years.

While the circumstances here outlined were undoubtedly favorable for Mr. Frick to bring together under one roof a super- lative collection in a little over twenty years, the fact remains that

many other American men of wealth had a similar opportunity. However, with the possible exception ofJ. P. Morgan's collection of rare books, manuscripts, Renaissance bronzes, Chinese ceramics and a limited number of paintings, none achieved the comprehen- sive excellence of Mr. Frick's acquisitions. What is remarkable is the extraordinary taste displayed by a man whose early life had almost all been involved in industrial and financial affairs. No doubt Mr. Frick sought good counsel on occasion from such critics as Roger Fry and he bought mainly through the reputable old firm of Knoedler's, in whose interest it was to seek out the very finest works available for their client. Nevertheless, the final decision was Mr. Frick's and the whole collection must always bear, in large measure, his stamp of approval.

Paintings were for most of Frick's collecting life his primary interest. Only in his last few years did he turn to sculpture and then only, it would seem, as a decorative supplement, together with fine furniture, ceramics and painted enamels, as furnishing for the house at One East Seventieth Street, designed by Thomas Hastings of the New York firm of Carriere and Hastings, and constructed

during the years 1913-14- A few statistics concerning the paintings will help to measure the

directions of Mr. Frick's taste as a collector. Of the 16o paintings catalogued, Frick himself bought 132 by the time he died in 1919. The remaining 28 have been added over the years, either as gifts from his daughter, Miss Helen Clay Frick, or as purchases from the endowment funds bequeathed by Mr. Frick. Of the original 132

paintings, 53 are portraits, 29 are landscapes, 4 are religious sub-

jects, 15 are genre, 3 are mythological, and 28 are decorative or other. The 28 paintings acquired after Mr. Frick's death consist of

9 portraits, 2 landscapes, 14 religious subjects, 2 genre and I still life by Chardin (the only still life, by the way, in the whole

collection). From these few statistics it is readily apparent that Mr. Frick's

taste ran mainly to portraits and, to a lesser extent, landscapes. Religious pictures are noticeably in the minority as one might expect from someone of strict Protestant upbringing. Miss Frick and succeeding directors and trustees, as the above figures show, have done something to rectify this iconographic imbalance, although to do Mr. Frick justice not one of the later religious pictures is quite on a par with one of the great masterpieces of the

Collection, Bellini's St. Francis in Ecstasy, purchased in 1915. A final word about the sculpture collection. As I have suggested

above, one cannot escape the impression that it was for Mr. Frick

something of an afterthought. As Harry Grier, Director of the Frick Collection, has pointed out in his preface to the sculpture catalogues, "it was only after his [Mr. Frick's] decision to bequeath his New York residence as a public art gallery that he turned his serious attention to sculpture." Which is to say, the sculpture collection was begun four years before Mr. Frick's death and in essence is largely the result of his purchase of a select group of Renaissance bronzes from the J. Pierpont Morgan Collection. What an afterthought and what a purchase! While one supposes Morgan should be given the principal credit for assembling the bronze collection in the first place, Frick

himself, together with his

adviser, Belle da Costa Greene, the late Director of the Pierpont Morgan Library, must be given credit for selecting the cream of the collection for One East Seventieth Street.

John Pope-Hennessy, assisted by Anthony F. Radcliffe, is

responsible for the cataloguing of the Renaissance and subsequent periods of Italian sculpture as well as German, Netherlandish and French sculpture from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Terence W. I. Hodgkinson has catalogued the French and British sculpture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. All these authors have drawn on the original researches of the late

BOOK REVIEWS 265

art-historical material; historical life of images, conditioned by numerous factors, as it is, reveals some regularities of its own, which we have to discover and to describe. And for any future

development of studies in that field Professor Van de Waal's Drie eeuwen vaderlandsche geschied-uitbeelding is a fundamental con- tribution.1

JAN BIALOSTOCKI

University of Warsaw and National Mluseum in Warsaw

1 The present review, due for a long time, would probably not have been written had it not been for a grant from the Netherlands Organiza- tion for the Advancement of pure Research (Z.W.O.), which I received thanks to the University of Utrecht, and which provided time and opportunity for several weeks of study in Holland.

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266 THE ART BULLETIN

Sir Eric Maclagan, who was responsible for the sculpture volumes of the monumental folio catalogue referred to above. Some of

Maclagan's attributions have had to be changed, as more recent

scholarship has had to be taken into account. The resulting catalogues of 1970 are, like the paintings catalogues, models for all to follow. The format follows the painting volumes and the

photography is again extraordinarily fine and beautifully repro- duced.

In attempting to review these Frick catalogues I have been haunted by a comment of W. H. Auden's: "Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad; when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful."'1 I am of the same mind about art catalogues. When they are as

superlatively good as these Frick catalogues one must just read and be grateful.

ANDREW CARNDUFF RITCHIE

Yale University Art Gallery

1 W. H. Auden, A Certain World, A Common Place Book, New York, Viking Press, 1970, page viin.

JACOB LANDY, The Architecture of Minard Lafever, New York, Columbia University Press, 1970. 109 ills. $17.50.

This is the first book on Minard Lafever (1798-1854). Hitherto known primarily as the author of several builders' handbooks of

widespread influence in the Greek Revival, Lafever is revealed in this scholarly study as a practicing architect of major import- ance in the Gothic Revival. With many references to his near-

contemporaries such as Martin E. Thompson (ca.1786-1877), Calvin Pollard (1797-1850), Ithiel Town (1784-1844), A. J. Davis (1803-1892), Isaiah Rogers (1800-1869), Richard Upjohn (1802-1878), and James Renwick (1818-1895), the book presents a rich panorama of the New York architectural scene from about

1825 to 1855. Lafever grew up in the Finger Lakes district of western New

York and was self-trained in architectural design. Apparently he built houses there. The story is told that "at the age of 18 he walked 50 miles to Geneva, New York, to purchase his first trea- tise on architecture." This bookish turn remained with him all his life. He delighted in drawing plans and elevations of houses and exterior and interior details, which he published in a series of books.

Landy does not discuss these books per se, but since they were of such great influence, it is well to list them: The Young Builder's General Instructor. Newark, 1829; The Modern Builder's Guide. New

York, 1833; The Beauties of Modern Architecture. New York, 1835; The Modern Practice of Staircase & Handrail Construction. New York, 1838; The Architectural Instructor. New York, 1856.

The first three were primarily influential in the developing Greek Revival, all over the country, with their rich details of columns and entablatures, rosettes, anthemion bands, egg-and- dart ornament and the like, primarily inspired by the Erechtheum, but always gracefully and imaginatively modified. The Architec- tural Instructor, published posthumously, revealed the increasing eclecticism of the 1850's in its Gothic and Italianate designs for

cottages, villas, and mansions. Lafever moved to Newark in 1824, where he worked as a car-

penter and joiner, and then to New York in 1828, where he soon became listed in the directories as "architect." His name, during the nineteenth century, was often given as "Lefevre" (or even "LaFevre" or "LeFebvre"), but it is listed in the family Bible as "Lafever" and he signed his letters "M. Lafever."

It is ironic that although his books were enormously influential in spreading the Greek Revival style throughout the country, Lefever designed only one Greek building. This was his first known

major work, the First Reformed Dutch Church (1834-35) in

Brooklyn. It was octastyle amphiprostyle, using the Ionic order of the Temple on the Ilissus at Athens. The construction was of

brick stuccoed over to imitate white marble. The Greek Revival had already nearly run its course in New York, and this was one of the last full temple-type porticoes.

Lafever's practice, almost entirely ecclesiastical, was extensive. Thomas Stafford Drowne wrote in 1868: "The structures of Mr. Lafever are scattered over the country, but chiefly in New York

State, New Jersey, New England, and in Upper Canada.... Of

nearly forty sacred edifices designed by him in his later years, the

following in Brooklyn may be mentioned ...

" Other sources indicate that Lafever designed about forty churches. But it is hard to document them. Most of the older records of Manhattan were

destroyed by fire in 1902, while those for Brooklyn do not go further back than the 1870's. Despite the most assiduous and

impressive scholarship, the author concedes that "Thus far it has

been possible to identify with certainty only sixteen churches by Lafever, to which may be added three attributed churches based on stylistic evidence or local tradition. The public buildings include a bank, two schools, and a projected monument to Wash-

ington in New York. All but one of the six private residences pre- sumed to be by Lafever remain undocumented. . . . Continued

investigation, however, will surely turn up other works by Lafever in scattered locations."

Lafever's first venture into Gothic for churches was the Dutch

Reformed Church on Washington Square (1839-1840) on the

opposite street corner from Town and Davis's New York Univer-

sity building (1833-36). The church had a twin-towered faqade in the Perpendicular style, ultimately derived from York Cathedral, and marked a break with Batty Langley's "picturesque" Gothic in the direction of greater archaeological authenticity. Since it

preceded Richard Upjohn's Trinity Church (1841-46), it may

lay some claim to inaugurating the mature phase of Gothic

Revival church architecture in this country. There followed a succession of churches in New York and

Brooklyn, mostly Perpendicular outside and Decorated Gothic

within, before the Church of the Holy Trinity, in Brooklyn Heights

(1844-47), which was wholly in the Decorated Gothic style. This

the author considers Lafever's masterpiece, and two whole chap- ters are devoted to its history and description. Unfortunately it is

now closed, and vandalism and weathering are contributing to its

deterioration. Lafever was a Unitarian, but had none of Richard Upjohn's

scruples about using Gothic for the non-conformist churches. So

during his career he happily used Gothic for his own Unitarians, the Dutch Reformed, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Universalist con-

gregations, as well as Upjohn's Episcopalians. His interior vaulting, when there was any, was always of plaster.

One device frequently used is intriguing: a basilican interior, with

nave arcade and clerestory (he never used a triforium), had lower

side-aisles, usually supporting balconies. But the exterior roof did

not reveal this basilican shape at all. It had a plain gable roof

covering both nave and side-aisles, and a series of skylights to give indirect lighting to the clerestory windows.

In the middle I840's Lafever turned to the increasing eclecticism

of the day. Inspired perhaps by the Tombs Prison and the Croton

Reservoir, he ventured the Egyptian style in two obelisks: the

Shields Monument in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, and the

ill-fated design for a Washington Monument in New York. Also

attributed to Lafever by strong local tradition is the curious

Whalers' Church in Sag Harbor, Long Island. With its battered

pylon facade

it is undeniably Egyptian in intent, but the lofty spire (blown down in the hurricane of September, I938) derives

from the Federal style, and the interior ornaments are pure Minard Lafever.

Also in the late forties and early fifties Lafever turned to the Italian Renaissance style. His executed work was in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century styles rather than the freer and more

picturesque "Italian Villa" style, though he did include several

designs in the latter mode for houses in The Architectural Instructor.

Landy includes two chapters on churches and houses attributed to Lafever in this book, but he is inclined to be skeptical. Lacking documentary evidence as to Lafever's active participation, it is far easier to suppose that Lafeveresque details (of which there are

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