Art That Breathes on Paper: The Graphic Masterpieces of the Frick Collection
From April to August 11, 2025, the Frick Collection in New York presents Highlights of Drawings from The Frick Collection, an intimate yet remarkably eloquent exhibition that inaugurates the museum’s new Cabinet Gallery. The display brings together works on paper selected from the permanent collection—sheets rarely shown to the public due to their natural sensitivity to light—offering a rare immersion into the most intimate and spontaneous dimension of artistic creation: drawing.
LEFT: Unidentified German (Swabia) artist, Virgin and Child, late 15th century, Pen and black ink, white heightening, yellow, red and pink gouache on paper, 8 7/16 x 5 3/4 in. (21.4 x 14.6 cm), Purchased by The Frick Collection, 1936, © The Frick Collection; RIGHT: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), Study for Louise, Princesse de Broglie, Later the Comtesse d’Haussonville, 1843–44, Graphite and black chalk on paper, 14 9/16 x 7 5/16 in. (37 x 18.6 cm), sheet: 14 9/16 × 7 5/8 in. Purchased by The Frick Collection, 1959, © The Frick Collection
The names featured in the exhibition speak for themselves: Titian, Rubens, Degas, Goya, Pisanello, Lorrain, Gainsborough, Whistler, Altdorfer, Redouté. Central figures in the history of Western art, they reveal here not so much their formal grandeur, but rather the vibrant tension of gesture, the act of study, the exploration of form, and the sketching of thought in motion.
Drawing as Thought in Progress
Unlike paintings or sculptures, drawings are rarely created with the intention of being exhibited. They are often preparatory, personal exercises in observation or fleeting moments of insight. Yet, in the hands of the masters featured at the Frick, paper becomes both a field of inquiry and a poetic surface. Each sheet reveals a different relationship with drawing: some use it as a quick note, others elevate it to an autonomous work, and still others treat it as a form of visual writing.
Peter Paul Rubens, for instance, regarded drawing as a direct extension of his pictorial thinking: his sheets preserve the kinetic energy of his style, with powerful bodies traced by rapid, vibrant lines. In the exhibition, his stroke appears as a living organism, a synthesis of classicism and baroque theatricality.
LEFT: Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Studies of Venus (recto); Studies for a Last Judgment (verso), ca. 1618–20, Pen and brown ink on paper, 8 × 11 1/16 in. (20.3 × 28.1 cm), Purchased by The Frick Collection, 1936, ©The Frick Collection; RIGHT: Attributed to Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) (1488–1576), Landscape with a Satyr, 16th century, Pen and brown ink on paper, 7 7/16 x 8 1/8 in. (18.9 x 20.6 cm), Purchased by The Frick Collection, 1936, ©The Frick Collection.
Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), a central figure of the Venetian Renaissance, is represented by a rare drawing that reveals his mastery of chiaroscuro and his deep interest in the human figure, captured in fluid and natural poses. Unlike Rubens, Titian’s line is more attuned to light than to structure, almost painterly in its tonal construction.
 LEFT: Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée) (1604–1682), View from Tivoli, 1651, Black chalk, pen, and iron-gall ink, two shades of iron-gall wash on paper, 7 7/8 x 10 1/2 in. (20 x 26.7 cm), Purchased by The Frick Collection, 1982, ©The Frick Collection; RIGHT: Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828), The Anglers, 1812–20, Brush and brown wash on paper, 7 3/4 x 5 5/16 in. (19.7 x 13.5 cm), Purchased by The Frick Collection, 1936, ©The Frick Collection
Landscapes, Botany, and Intimate Visions
Claude Lorrain, with his atmospheric landscapes, brings to drawing the same sensitivity to the breath of time and space found in his paintings. His sheets, often rendered in mixed media using ink and chalk, resemble dreams suspended between light and natural architecture.
In contrast, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, known as the “Raphael of Flowers,” turns botanical drawing into both a scientific and poetic art form. His roses and peonies are studied with such precision they seem to come alive, making the paper almost translucent in its effort to reveal nature’s truth.
LEFT: Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), Study of a Woman Facing Right, Possibly Ann Ford (Later Mrs. Phillip Thicknesse), 1760, Black chalk (with evidence of chalk dipped in oil) and pencil on paper, 14 1/8 x 10 3/8 in. (35.9 x 26.4 cm), Henry Clay Frick Bequest, ©The Frick Collection; RIGHT: Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840), Plum Branches Intertwined, 1802–4, Watercolor on vellum, 12 9/16 x 10 3/8 in. (31.9 x 26.4 cm), Bequest of Charles A. Ryskamp, 2010, © The Frick Collection
Thomas Gainsborough, one of the great English portraitists of the 18th century, entrusted his drawings with the light elegance of his compositions: wind-blown trees, figures immersed in the landscape, sketched with a grace that seems to belong more to music than to matter. His draftsmanship is always refined, yet never static.
Intimacy of Line, Strength of Gesture
Edgar Degas, known for his obsession with movement and the female form, captures on paper the gestural memory of bodies in dance, at rest, or in tension. His pastel and charcoal sheets resemble moments stolen from time, suspended between immediacy and deliberate construction. James McNeill Whistler, a quintessential transatlantic artist, treats line as a musical thread: his drawings are dominated by emptiness, rarefaction, and tonal modulation. Each mark is a controlled pause, a suspension that speaks through subtle subtraction.
The German artist Albrecht Altdorfer, on the other hand, brings to paper the epic storytelling and miniature precision of the Northern Renaissance. His drawings narrate complex scenes in small formats, with an attention to detail that borders on engraving and woodcut techniques.
LEFT: Albrecht Altdorfer (ca. 1480–1538), Mercenary Foot Soldier, 1512, Pen and black ink heightened with white gouache on paper prepared with brown wash, 5 13/16 x 4 1/16 in. (14.8 x 10.3 cm), Purchased by The Frick Collection, 1936, ©The Frick Collection; RIGHT: James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), Venetian Canal, 1880, Black chalk and pastel on dark brown paper, 11 7/8 x 8 1/16 in. (30.1 x 20.5 cm), Henry Clay Frick Bequest, © The Frick Collection
A Silent Yet Revealing Experience
The exhibition, housed in the new Cabinet Gallery, is conceived as an invitation to contemplation. The intimate setting enhances the personal nature of the drawings, and the minimalist display restores to the paper all its fragility and intensity. As Matthew Kirsch, the exhibition’s curator, notes, the goal is not to replicate the past but to recreate the visual constellations through which these sheets can now engage with one another and with today’s viewers.
This is not merely about presenting rare works — it is about rediscovering drawing as the original language of art, preceding painting and sculpture — a language that continues to resonate across centuries, on the whiteness of paper.
LEFT: Pisanello (Antonio di Puccio Pisano) (ca. 1395–1455), Studies of Men Hanging, ca. 1435, Pen and brown ink, over traces of black chalk on paper, 10 5/16 × 7 in. (26.2 × 17.8 cm), backing paper: 12 × 7 1/2 in. (30.5 × 19.1 cm), Purchased by The Frick Collection, 1936, © The Frick Collection; RIGHT: Edgar Degas (1834–1917), Study of a Male Nude with a Sword, ca. 1856–59, Graphite on rose-colored paper, 11 x 8 1/8 in. (27.9 x 20.6 cm), Bequest of Charles A. Ryskamp, 2010, © The Frick Collection
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