The Frick Collection: An Illustrated Catalogue Vol. I. Paintings: American, British, Dutch,Flemish and German. Vol. II. Paintings: French, Italian and SpanishReview by: PHILIP JAMESJournal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 117, No. 5158 (SEPTEMBER 1969), pp. 756-757Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41370417 .

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS SEPTEMBER I969

came from Austria and did not belong to any of the original groups. In this new and sensitive appreciation, Dr. Fritz Schmalenbach, Director of Museums in Lübeck and associated for many years with the artist's work, poses the question as to whether an individualist can be said to link on to a general movement. In a series of carefully chosen representative paintings, he examines the mutations in the artist's work, seeing them as links in a logical development of an organic whole.

Beginning with a group of early portraits and landscapes painted around 1907, Dr. Schmalen- bach discerns in their transparency of paint and fragmented drawing, resembling 'plants under water', the manifestations of a spiritual element. Indeed, spirituality in the representation of nature was the young artist's primary object. Though other aims were added gradually, the intention in the period of 191 1 is still to present the spiritual aspect, but the paintings are en- riched by new elements of spaciousness, and in close connection with this, colour. These two new elements, says the author, concerned per- haps more with the external appearance than the spiritual, had to be both combined and kept sufficiently distinct. Dr. Schmalenbach studies this synthesis in the paintings, noting the com- plex system 'invented with genius' for this purpose. Variants of this period, the unison of colour and line and increased spatiality, occur in a group of paintings of 191 3-1 5, of which Self Portrait with Alma Mahler is rightly cited by the author as a characteristic and masterly example. The dramatic element breaks out more forcibly in a number of succeeding paintings, and atten- tion is drawn to a greater contortion of forms, tumultuous movement of the lines and the hectic calligraphic character of the brush marks.

In the style of the next period further varia- tions are noted by the author. These concern above all the colour, which is re-introduced with great beauty, 'producing the effect of an exquisite material, a jewel for the senses'. This highly expressive rôle of colour, its turbulent luminosity and glowing paint surface, is interpreted by the author as the peak of the paintings in the 1917-18 period. Colour assumed a more modest function after 1924, to the advantage of line, which Dr. Schmalenbach sees as the main in- gredient in Kokoschka's spiritual language. In all these mutations, however, Dr. Schmalenbach discerns the essential quality - that of a great awareness and closeness to nature - in which the appearance of the object is given a decisive func- tion and which generated after 1924 a form of painting relatively uniform ever since.

Critics have called Kokoschka one of the most significant artists of our time. Whether he paints the face of a man or the profile of a city, it is always informed by acute psychological percep- tion and the personal sensibility of his human vision. The forty-eight colour photographs in the book illustrate most admirably the scholarly text

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of Dr. Schmalenbach' s study of one of the greatest artists of the present day.

OTTILIE TOLANSKY

The Frick Collection: An Illustrated Catalogue Vol. I. Paintings: Americani British , Dutch , Flemish and German. Vol. II. Paintings: French , Italian and Spanish. New York , Princeton University Press , 1968. [ London , O.U.P. , £19 net.] Gallery-goers innumerable, even on this side of the Atlantic, asked to name their favourite haunt, answer without any hesitation - 'the Frick'. The intimate scale which permits of an arrangement that enables china and bronzes to be shown on pieces of furniture or a marble bust to be set on the mantelpiece, the atmosphere of a private house, albeit a luxurious one with its Edwardian plushness, flowers and splashing fountain, but above all the consistently superlative quality of the works, together create an unique ambience.

The collection ranges from the Trecento to Impressionism, with an emphasis on Italian Renaissance art, Dutch painting of the seven- teenth century, French rococo and British por- traits of the eighteenth century. It is therefore typical of millionaire taste at the turn of the century when Mr. Frick did most of his buying; but it is a good deal more than this and reflects a taste of unusual distinction. If it were only an American version of le goût Rothschild one would not, for example, expect to find so rare and beautiful a work as the French Pietà which was bought on the advice of Roger Fry during his short curatorship at the Metropolitan Museum. We learn, too, from the fascinating history of the collection told in a short preface by the Director, Mr. Harry Grier, that Mr. Frick, unlike too many collectors who put a testamentary freeze on their benefactions, endowed the collection, thus enabling additions to be made from time to time. Since Mr. Frick's death in 19 19 some im- portant works have been acquired including those by Duccio, van Eyck, Piero della Fran- cesca (the panel of St. Simon from a triptych of which a companion wing is the St. Michael in the National Gallery), Ingres and Claude Lorrain (the splendid Sermon on the Mount from the Duke of Westminster's collection). It will be seen therefore that while no restrictions are placed on date or provenance, new purchases are in fact confined to the period covered by pur- chases made by Mr. Frick himself. This not only preserves the spirit of the original but makes good sense, as New York has as supplements to the general scope of the Metropolitan, in addi- tion to the Frick, the Cloisters for the early Renaissance and earlier, and the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney and the Guggenheim for post-Impressionism up to the present day.

It was perhaps appropriate that the catalogue of this stunning conglomeration, published over

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SEPTEMBER I969 NOTES ON BOOKS

the years 1949-56, should be in 12 folio volumes j on English handmade paper in a limited edition I of only 175 copies. These were personally dis- tributed by Miss Helen Frick as gifts to libraries and art galleries, and of the nine sets which reached this country probably the only one readily available to the general public is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. A new, more modest and more widely available production in quarto, with entries revised in the light of modéťh scholarship and recent research, is there- fore to be warmly welcomed. These two volumes dealing with the paintings only are the first to appear out of a total of nine which will cover the whole collection. Every painting is illustrated and, in addition, fifty details, and every signature has been reproduced when it is to be found on a painting. Fourteen of the plates are in colour and there are also four colour plates of the rooms showing the overall arrangement of various parts of the collections. The quality of these photogravure plates throughout is quite exceptional.

Each catalogue entry consists of a thumb-nail biography of the painter, the size, date and signature, a paragraph on the colour, a detailed description of the subject and a note on the con- dition. Then follows a critical summary relating the picture to the rest of the artist's oeuvre and discussing the alternative attributions of various authorities, often with quotations from support- ing documents, full details of which, together with other relevant references, are given in exemplary bibliographical notes. As the acknow- ledgements indicate, the advice of specialists and scholars has been widely sought to ensure that these notes are authoritative and up to date. This is, in short, a model catalogue of a great collection, an essential work of reference for every art library - and for every art historian who can find £19 - and a yard-stick in the style and quality of its production and notably, one must repeat, of its illustrations.

PHILIP JAMES

The Davies Collection of French Art By John Ingamells. Cardiff , National Museum of Wales , 1967. 60s net For the fervent admirer of French painting, from Barbizon to Bonnard, periodic visits to the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, are essential - and richly rewarding. There he will find the best collection of Daumier's paintings in Great Britain - seven oils, which are supplemented by four drawings. These are matched by seven Millet oils which neatly cover the artist's devel- opment from the mid-40s to his death in 1875, and which again form the best single group of Millet's work in this country. The four Corots, on the other hand, all come from the period that was most in favour with late Victorian and Edwardian collectors - the feathery, silver-grey

pictures of 1855-70 - whereas present-day taste prefers the early Roman landscapes, the late figure subjects and even the finished Salon works. Barbizon is represented by a typical Fête Champêtre of Diaz, while two small oil studies and a large view of Venice of 1895 take care of Boudin.

Impressionism is not represented by any of the major landscapes of the 1870s and early 1880S. Instead, there are three Manets from these years - one a view of the river at Argen- teuil - and a Berthe Morisot of 1882. The centre- piece, however, is Renoir's La Parisienne , painted in 1874 and shown that year at the first Impressionist exhibition. There are two other Renoirs, a rapidly sketched-in head of a young girl (c. 1882) and a typical late work of 19 12. The two Pissarros are also late - views of Rouen (1898) and of the Pont Neuf under snow (1902) - as is the Sisley of Moret (1892). Equally, the eight works by Monet all belong to his late period : a Rouen cathedral of 1 894 is followed by a view of Charing Cross Bridge of 1902, while three variations of his water-lilies at Giverny are accompanied by three Venetian pictures of 1908. For the contemplation of late Monet, there is no remotely comparable collection in this country. Another compulsive reason for a visit to Cardiff is the presence of Cézanne - three paintings and two watercolours all demand prolonged confron- tation. Of the other Post-Impressionists Gauguin used to be present, but a rather sentimental and stylized picture of Breton girls at prayer is now attributed to his follower, Armand Séguin. Van Gogh is represented by a characteristic Auvers landscape.

Somewhat unexpected are six works by Carrière, a painter who has still to recover some of the high regard that he enjoyed in the 1890s. There is also a Puvis de Chavannes sketch for his St. Geneviève decoration in the Panthéon. The paintings are supplemented by sculpture - seven diverse examples of Rodin (six, if one doesn't accept the marble version of Le Baiser) and two Degas bronzes.

The years after 1900 are represented by two pre-1914, but non-Fauve, landscapes by Vla- minck, a Friesz of La Ciotat (1907), a Utrillo (19 1 5), a Derain portrait of 19 19, a Signac water- colour of St. Tropez, a Bonnard landscape of c. 1920 and finally a late Marquet of 1944.

That all these works are now in Cardiff is due to the remarkable enterprise of the two Davies sisters, Gwendoline (1882-1951) and Margaret (1884-1963). The story of their pioneering efforts, particularly so in the years from 1908 to 1920, is the subject of Mr. Ingamells' book. Catalogues of a gallery's collection tend to divide into two groups: the richly annotated scholar's compilation and the more easily digested popular handbook. Mr. Ingamells has skilfully combined them. He provides documentation on the growth of the Davies collection of French painting and, in a second section, he uses the individual pic-

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