Reciprocal Loan Collaboration Between the Frick and Norton Simon Museum

Written by Rahul Tendulkar Monday, 12 December 2011 21:34

 

NEW YORK, NY - Established decades apart and on separate coasts, New York’s Frick Collection and the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, CA, are both fine examples of a museum type that focuses on the viewpoint and taste of an individual founder. Henry Clay Frick was by no means the first American to create a museum for the public with his own holdings, but the 1935 opening of the institution bearing his name sparked international headlines and set an example followed subsequently by many others, including Californian Norton Simon. Indeed, exactly four decades later, Simon turned to the Frick as a model for his own institution. It is therefore fitting that the two organizations should one day become collaborators, and this winter, they inaugurate an ongoing reciprocal loan arrangement with the Frick presentation of Masterpieces of European Painting from the Norton Simon Museum. On view in New York from February 10 through May 10 in the Frick’s Oval Room will be five sixteenth- and seventeenth-century masterpieces, none of which has left its Southern California home in almost three decades.

True highlights from the Norton Simon Museum, an institution that has seldom lent from its collection, the featured paintings are Jacopo Bassano’s (Jacopo da Ponte, 1510–1592) Flight into Egypt, c. 1544–45; Peter Paul Rubens’s (1577–1640) Holy Women at the Sepulchre, c. 1611–14; Guercino’s (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, 1591–1666) Aldrovandi Dog, c. 1625; Francisco de Zurbarán’s (1598–1664) Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose, 1633; and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s (1617–1682) Birth of Saint John the Baptist, c. 1660. 

Colin B. Bailey comments, “It was a great privilege to be able to select five unquestioned masterpieces from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from the collection of European paintings at the Norton Simon Museum, each one of which ranks among the artist’s finest works in any museum. More by accident than design the artists selected are not represented in the Frick’s permanent collection yet the level of quality is absolutely consistent with the Frick’s greatest works. I am excited that the extraordinary riches of the Norton Simon Museum are being introduced to our audience in this peerless group, and delighted that we are able to reciprocate in the autumn of 2010 with a loan of Ingres’s Comtesse d’Haussonville and two related drawings from our collection.”

Norton Winfred Simon (1907–1993) was a pioneering entrepreneur whose enormous wealth derived from numerous business ventures ranging from the creation of a sheet metal distribution company and the triumphant revival of Hunt Foods, Inc., to the eventual formation of Norton Simon Inc., a multi-industry conglomerate that included Hunt-Wesson Foods, McCall’s Publishing, Max Factor cosmetics, and Avis Car Rental. Simon’s focus turned to art in the 1950s, and in the same intelligent and strategic manner employed to forge his business empire, he amassed an art collection of great renown. In creating the basis for his museum, Simon looked to Henry Clay Frick and his museum as the preeminent model for acquisitions, installations, publications, and the shaping of visitors’ experiences. Like Frick, he was a self-made entrepreneur who collected art with a passion. Also like Frick, Simon’s hard-earned fortune enabled him to buy the best works of art available on the market. Simon’s first acquisitions were Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works by such recognized masters as Degas, Renoir, Gauguin, and Cézanne. In the 1960s he began acquiring Old Masters and modern works, choosing to sell many of his acclaimed French Impressionist paintings at the decade’s close; in the 1970s Simon’s appreciation for Indian and Southeast Asian art emerged and was reflected in his burgeoning collection.

Unlike Frick, whose collection was foremost a personal one that he later decided to bequeath to the public, Simon’s collection—from its inception—was shaped with the public in mind. So concerned was Simon with the public’s assessment of the artworks he acquired that he sought the opinion of scholars, dealers, and even members of his household staff. His desire to make important works of art available to Southern California’s community led him to assume a seminal role in the establishment of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Additionally, Simon created two foundations, each responsible for acquiring and exhibiting art under his direction as part of his mission to engender a “museum without walls.” Chief among The Norton Simon Foundation’s acquisitions was the 1964 purchase of the remainder of Duveen Brothers’ New York inventory, a significant cache that included Old Master paintings, Italian marbles, furniture, tapestries, its library, and even the New York City townhouse in which it all was housed.

A MIRACULOUS PURCHASE

In Jacopo Bassano’s majestic Flight into Egypt, Joseph flees Bethlehem with Mary and Jesus, having been warned by an angel in a dream of Herod’s call for the murder of all boys under the age of two. The artist’s representation departs significantly from the traditional account. Instead of making a nocturnal exodus through an arid landscape, Bassano’s figures escape across a sunlit, bountiful countryside, accompanied by an angel with fanciful downy wings. Absent from the biblical account, the angel is most likely the prophetic messenger of Joseph’s dream. He points toward a nascent fig branch growing from a dead stump (a sign of rebirth, alluding to the Resurrection as well as an indication of the road ahead and its promise of safety). On the far left behind the holy family, a humbly dressed man kneels to release three roosters from a basket to feed. Another figure, clothed in a green tunic, drains the last drops from a flask. Simon’s purchase of the Flight was considered near miraculous by the Benedictine monks who owned it. Put up for sale with the hope of initiating a building campaign for Prinknash Abbey in Gloucester, the work was acquired by Simon in 1969 from Christie’s, London, for $655,118—almost ten times the estimated auction price. 

A MILESTONE OF STILL LIFE PAINTING

Although Francisco de Zurbarán is thought of primarily as a painter of religious narratives, his Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose  is a milestone in both the artist’s oeuvre (it is his only signed and dated still life) and in the history of the genre. Against a velvety black background, three groupings of objects rest on a brown tabletop: four citrons (rather than lemons) are stacked on a lustrous silver plate; a woven blond basket, brimming with oranges, is crowned with orange blossoms; and a second silver dish displays a pink rose and a white two-handled cup containing water. An intense light coming from the viewer’s left defines the objects, inducting them into the three-dimensional world while skillfully avoiding illumination of the nebulous space behind them. This penetrating radiance cascades across the polished surface of the table, casting partial reflections of the fruit, basket, and plates. After a recent cleaning in preparation for its travel to the Frick, the objects now project more convincingly while Zurbarán’s signature and the painting’s date are more easily discernible on the table’s lower edge. Additionally, the structural division of the composition into three separate units might allude to the Trinity. No documentation exists, however, to confirm that these symbolic associations were intended by Zurbarán or understood as such by his contemporary audience. Moreover, x-radiographs of the painting reveal that Zurbarán originally had included a silver plate of batatas confitadas, a popular treat of candied sweet potato. This may indicate that the artist was more concerned, at least initially, with the physical qualities of the objects than with their symbolic allusions.

Zurbarán’s still life was once part of the distinguished collection of Count Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi (1878–1955), and, like all of Contini’s artworks, it was to be bequeathed to the Italian nation. Owing to complex negotiations with the count’s heirs, however, only a fraction of the legendary collection ultimately came into the possession of the Italian state, and the still life was not part of it. Simon, prompted by rumors that the Louvre was about to acquire the painting, spent an impressive $2,725,000 for it in 1972, the third highest price paid for an Old Master work at the time.

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