North America · United States
The Frick Collection
A steel tycoon's elegant mansion on Fifth Avenue is now a small museum filled with Old Master paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Holbein and Titian. Because the rooms look like a home, it feels far more personal than a big museum.
History of the museum
Henry Clay Frick, a Pittsburgh industrialist, built the mansion in 1913 to 1914 and filled it with art. When he died in 1919 he left it to the public, and after his widow Adelaide's death it opened as a museum in 1935. The rooms are still arranged much as the family lived in them, with paintings hung over fireplaces and among furniture. The result feels like a time capsule of Gilded Age taste.
Top pieces
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Girl Interrupted at Her Music Johannes Vermeer, 1659
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Officer and Laughing Girl Johannes Vermeer, 1657 -
Sir Thomas More Hans Holbein the Younger, 1527
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The Progress of Love Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1771
