Aimee Ng – författare

Gainsborough, whose importance was akin to that of later society artist John Singer Sargent, made hundreds of portraits, becoming one of the leaders of the fledging British School of artists. Very much a part of the social dynamic of the time, portraiture is described as a 'means by which artists and their subjects could reinforce, resist, or break rules of social order.' The engrossing text examines how fashion was understood, often in complex ways, in Gainsborough s time; how the artist would sometimes revisit a portrait to update a style; and how the documentation of both sitter and garment can be deciphered centuries after the creation of a work. Entries are provided on each of the twenty-five works in the exhibition that the catalogue accompanies. The book explores how and why Gainsborough and his sitters chose the trappings in which they would be immortalized in paint. From dukes and duchesses to the once-enslaved Ignatius Sancho, Gainsborough captured the essence of his contemporaries. A century after Gainsborough s death, his portraits experienced renewed popularity among wealthy American collectors such as the Fricks, Vanderbilts, and Huntingtons, who coveted his works for their private collections. This book provides a comprehensive understanding of Gainsborough s oeuvre and his time, and is an invaluable resource for understanding the longstanding appeal of eighteenth-century art.

Based on the critically acclaimed video series of the same name, Cocktails with a Curator presents a lively, relaxed, and informative mini-lecture on a single work in the Frick s collection. Most of the works discussed are paintings, but sculpture, drawings, and decorative arts objects are also subjects. Each commentary is accompanied by a recipe for a cocktail that ties in with the work presented. For instance, a Jaded Countess (absinthe, vodka, lemon juice, and simple syrup) is the cocktail paired with Ingres s beautiful portrait Comtesse d Haussonville. The Bloody Mary joins the intriguing story of the painting of Sir Thomas More by Hans Holbein the Younger, and a classic Pimm s Cup accompanies Thomas Gainsborough s lovely depiction of Grace Dalrymple Elliott. The inspiring and knowledgeable personalities of the curators come out with each of the sixty-five tales, all edited with an eye toward maintaining the tone of the videos.

American artist Barkley L. Hendricks (1945 2017) revolutionized contemporary portraiture with his vivid depictions of Black subjects beginning in the late 1960s. This book contextualizes Hendricks s portraits at different stages of the country s history and places him in the pantheon of innovative twentieth-century artists. Hendricks developed his signature style at a time of significant social and cultural change in the United States, especially with regard to Black artists, and amid a perceived bifurcation between abstraction and representation. He produced portraits from the late 1960s through the early 1980s. Following a hiatus during which he made landscapes, basketball paintings, works on paper, and photographs, he resumed his portraiture practice from 2002 until his death in 2017. Hendricks s portrait paintings, often derived from photographs of friends and family, hired models, or figures he encountered on the street, were inspired by the artist s research, international travels, and visits to museums like The Frick Collection, where he studied centuries-old European paintings by artists such as Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Bronzino, and others. This publication presents some of the most inventive and striking examples from Hendricks s first period of portrait painting, including 'limited-palette' canvases featuring Black figures dressed in white against white backgrounds a self-portrait, and boldly colorful works that spotlight their subjects spectacular styles and poses. An assessment of this great artist acknowledges his significant contributions to the canon of American art and portraiture in general.

An exploration of Turner as an artist-traveler, in relation to two important European harbor scenesThis publication marks the return to the United Kingdom, for the first time in over a century, of two groundbreaking oil paintings by J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), on loan from The Frick Collection in New York: Harbour of Dieppe: Changement de Domicile and Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet-Boat: Evening. They were acquired by wealthy American industrialist Henry Clay Frick in 1914 and have remained in the USA ever since.  Painted in the mid-1820s, Dieppe and Cologne exemplify Turner’s lifelong fascination with the subject of ports and harbors⁠—past and present⁠—as dynamic, transitional places. Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1825 and 1826 respectively, they represent in powerfully visual terms the outcomes of Turner’s regular sketching tours within Europe that were central to his fame as an artist-traveler, as well as his radical approach to color, light, and brushwork. This sumptuously illustrated publication examines Turner’s creative process, and his use of sketchbooks and watercolors to capture his ideas as he traveled. Published by National Gallery Global/Distributed by Yale University Press

The Stephen K. and Janie Woo Scher Collection of portrait medals is considered to be the world's greatest medals collection in private hands. This fully illustrated volume features twenty of the best objects in the collection, with a checklist of one hundred and sixty more, and an essay which highlights why the Scher collection is noted for its comprehensiveness and outstanding quality. An accessible introduction to a remarkable collection, this volume brings to life these masterpieces of small-scale sculpture, compellingly conveying the circumstances of their creation and their historic significance. A selection of some 160 portrait medals from the Scher collection is accompanied by an illustrated essay on the art of the medal, its origins, uses, and relationship to other arts. An in-depth scholarly publication that catalogues the entirety of this important collection-consisting of some 879 medals-is planned for a later date. AUTHOR: Aimee Ng is Associate Curator at The Frick Collection, NY, and a specialist in Italian Renaissance art. SELLING POINTS: . A compact guide to one of the best portrait medal collections in the world . Includes an essay on the art of the medal from the 15th- to the 19th-century in Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands and England . Beautiful images makes this an accessible and appealing introduction to the subject 40 colour

Designed to foster critical engagement and interest the specialist and non-specialist alike, each book in the Frick Diptych series illuminates a single work in the Frick's rich collection with an essay by a Frick curator paired with a contribution from a contemporary artist or writer. The White Horse (1819) by John Constable (1776–1837) is the first of the series of the "six-footers," monumental landscapes of the English countryside that would become the artist's most famous works. Constable described the scene as "a placid representation of a serene, grey morning, summer." Years later, he said, "there are generally in the life of an artist perhaps one, two or three pictures, on which hang more than usual interest - this is mine". An essay by Aimee Ng, Frick Curator, paired with a contribution by artist William Kentridge bring to life one of Constable's most serene depictions of rural life, the artist's personal favorite. AUTHORS: William Kentridge (born 28 April 1955) is a South African artist whose work spans a diverse range of artistic media such as drawing, performance, film, printmaking, sculpture and painting. Kentridge has also directed a number of acclaimed operas and theatrical productions. Aimee Ng is a curator at The Frick Collection, New York, and is a specialist in Italian Renaissance art. 38 colour illustrations

This beautiful publication presents for the first time the Eveillard Gift of drawings to The Frick Collection, the most important gift of drawings and pastels in its history. It accompanies an exhibition at the Frick and includes a catalogue of the works and commentaries by noted scholars. Twenty-six works of art promised to The Frick Collection by Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard dramatically advance the museum’s commitment to the research and display of European drawings. Included in this transformative gift from two longtime supporters of the Frick are exquisite drawings, pastels, prints, and one oil sketch by François Boucher, Gustave Caillebotte, Edgar Degas, Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Thomas Lawrence, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, John Singer Sargent, Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, and Jean-Antoine Watteau, among others. The works include figurative sketches, independent studies, portraits, and landscape scenes, each either deepening the museum’s celebrated holdings or bringing the work of an artist who is not – but should be – represented in the collection. This lavishly illustrated publication, which accompanies an exhibition at the Frick, includes a catalogue of the works, as well as comprehensive commentaries on each of promised gifts written by noted scholars in their field.

An informative guide to the most iconic works in The Frick Collection honoring the museum's reopening post-renovation. From paintings and sculpture to decorative arts, this publication encapsulates the range and depth of Henry Clay Frick's collection. Organized chronologically and by geographic school, The Frick Collection is designed to offer a sense of the connections between, and diversity among, contemporaneous artistic production across different fields, genres, and media in early modern Europe. When American industrialist Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919) built his New York home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, he intended for it to one day become a public art museum for the "use and benefit of all persons whomsoever." After his death and that of his wife, Adelaide, in 1931, the house was transformed into a museum and was opened to the public in December 1935. The Frick's daughter Helen Clay Frick (1888–1984), along with a board of trustees, was instrumental in the continuance of her father's legacy and the care of his bequest. Over the years, the collection grew and the number of visitors increased, requiring renovation campaigns in the 1970s and 2020s to accommodate these changes, the latest giving access to the public for the first time to a suite of rooms on the second floor. Originally the Frick family's private quarters, these rooms are now galleries for works of art, providing space for more objects to be on view. The scope of the collection, which spans from about 1300 to 1900, was never intended to be encyclopedic and reflects the taste of the founder, who chose to acquire works for his home that were "pleasing to live with."

Painted by Agnolo Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo) (Italian, 1503–1572) ca. 1550–55, the young aristocrat is Lodovico Capponi (b. 1533), a page at the Medici court. As was his custom, he wears black and white, his family's armorial colors. His right index finger partially conceals the cameo he holds, revealing only the inscription sorte (fate or fortune) — an ingenious allusion to the obscurity of fate. In the mid 1550s Lodovico fell in love with a girl whom Duke Cosimo had intended for one of his cousins. After nearly three years of opposition, Cosimo suddenly relented, but he commanded that their wedding be celebrated within twenty-four hours.

Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters is an exciting volume featuring the work of four New York based artists, each presenting a single new work in conversation with celebrated paintings in The Frick Collection, with particular emphasis on issues of gender and queer identity typically excluded from narratives of early modern European art. The idea of commissioning four works to display at Frick Madison emerged when four masterpieces by Vermeer, Holbein, and Rembrandt were loaned to exhibitions. Works by Jenna Gribbon, Doron Langberg, Toyin Ojih Odutola and Salman Toor were commissioned to replace them, alongside other works by these artists. This book is the result of the four New York artists' responses to the Frick's collection, and the conversations their work engendered. Written contributions are provided by Jonathan Anderson, Jessica Bell Brown, Christopher Lew, Jason Reynolds, Legacy Russell, and Russell Tovey. SELLING POINTS: . Queer art for the Old Masters . Ties in with a series of ongoing installations of works by contemporary LGBTQ+ artists produced in response to selected works at the Frick . Contributions by artists, writers and curators bring a diverse and rich perspective . Featured artists Jenna Gribbon, Doron Langberg, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Salman Toor allow us to see long-familiar works in the Frick's collection in new ways . Doron Langberg's Lover is paired with Hans Holbein's Sir Thomas More;; Jenna Gribbon's What Am I Doing Here? I Should Ask You the Same with Holbein's Thomas Cromwell Salman Toor's Museum Boys with Johannes Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl and Toyin Ojih Odutola's The Listener with Rembrandt's Self-Portrait 45 colour illustrations

Kent Monkman is frequently inspired by museum collections, re-envisioning iconic works through a contemporary Indigenous lens. He explores themes of colonization, sexuality, loss and resilience-the complexities of historic and contemporary Indigenous experiences-across painting, film/video, performance and installation. His gender-fluid alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, often appears in his work as a time-traveling, shapeshifting, supernatural being who reverses the colonial gaze to challenge received notions of history and Indigenous peoples.In this English / Canadian French volume, Monkman, as Miss Chief, is seated in his paintings across from a male figure in a room similar to the one in Vermeer's iconic Officer and Laughing Girl. The five paintings depict Miss Chief joined variously by a 17th-century Dutch officer, an 18th-century French explorer, a 19th-century American soldier, a 20th-century Catholic priest and a 21st-century tech executive.

Innumerable pearlsline the blue satin dress of the Honourable Frances Duncombe, who wears abright red jewel on her chest, possibly a ruby or garnet. Frances was raised byher stepmother in the house of the Earl of Radnor and was betrothed to theearl's eldest son. However, her engagement was broken off when the familydiscovered her affair with a John Bowater, whom she married in 1778. Exactlywhen and why this monumental portrait was commissioned from Gainsborough isunknown. After spending some years living in Germany (rumoured to have had anaffair with Archduke Maximilian Franz, brother of the French queen, MarieAntoinette), Frances returned to England and lived with this portrait in herfamily home, Old Dalby Hall, in Leicestershire, until her death, in 1827.Mizrahi's creativecontribution adds greatly to this book about this iconic painting of afashionable lady. He mentions the moment of first catching a glimpse of thework when seeing it unframed. "I gasp. Frances Duncombe looks every bit as gorgeous unframed, if not even moreso for the vulnerability."