{"id":26510,"date":"2025-06-25T08:05:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T12:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/?p=26510"},"modified":"2025-06-25T10:52:22","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T14:52:22","slug":"vermeers-love-letters-at-the-frick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/?p=26510","title":{"rendered":"Vermeer’s Love Letters at the Frick"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Vermeer’s Love Letters at the Frick (photo courtesy of the Frick Collection)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Whenever my mother was in town and the weather uncooperative, she might say to me, \u201cShall we go visit our friends at the Frick?\u201d It was her favorite museum in Manhattan, just as it is for so many others\u2014and now the Frick<\/a> is back, and better than ever after a $330 million refurbishment of its original home, with an inaugural exhibition featuring a triptych of Vermeer\u2019s Love Letters<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Johannes Vermeer, Mistress and Maid (photo by \u00a9MRNY)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The three paintings by Dutch master Johannes Vermeer are united for the first time in a single gallery, thanks to special loans of the Rijksmuseum\u2019s Love Letter <\/em>and the National Gallery of Ireland\u2019s Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid<\/em>. The two paintings on loan flank the Frick\u2019s own Mistress and Maid<\/em>, which is one of three Vermeers in the permanent Frick Collection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Johannes Vermeer, Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid (ca. 1670-72) (photo courtesy of National Gallery of Ireland)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Vermeer\u2019s Love Letters<\/em> is the first exhibition to be held in the Frick\u2019s new special exhibition galleries, and the spacious gallery offers visitors a unique opportunity to view the close bonds between the three Vermeers. Of the nearly three dozen Vermeer paintings that survive in various museum collections around the world, six of them are focused on the exchange of handwritten letters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Johannes Vermeer, The Love Letter (ca. 1669-70) (photo courtesy of Rijksmuseum Amsterdam)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In showcasing these three Vermeers alongside each other, viewers are offered an implicit narrative that speaks about the interior lives of both the mistress and her maid, as well as the depiction of women of different social classes. There\u2019s a subtext in each of the paintings that fuels the literary and cinematic imagination, and it\u2019s easy enough to envision the backstories to these paintings coming alive via the pages of a novel or a period film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Porcelain Garden by Vladimir Kanevsky in the Garden Court at the Frick Collection (photo by \u00a9MRNY)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Equally impressive and remarkable is the installation Porcelain Garden<\/em> by Vladimir Kanevsky<\/a>, an artist who has filled the Frick\u2019s galleries with breathtaking porcelain bouquets of extraordinary flora which correspond to the actual floral bouquets that were displayed throughout the museum at the Frick\u2019s original opening in 1935. The Ukrainian-born artist views his porcelain sculptures as an installation that coexists with the paintings and the sculpture of the Frick Collection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Garden Court at the Frick Collection (photo by \u00a9MRNY)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But, of course, what makes the Frick so warm and welcoming are all the friends who live there full-time. Everyone has their favorites, and many have written about them, including numerous writers who contributed to the volume The Sleeve Should Be Illegal<\/em><\/a>. The title is a reference to the lushness of the crimson velvet in the Holbein portrait of Sir Thomas More, one of my favorite Frick friends who has returned to his position alongside Thomas Cromwell.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was equally joyful to see again Lady Peel and Pietro Aretino, as well as the Genoese Noblewoman and the Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac. As for the Comtesse d\u2019Haussonville (who, incidentally, was the subject of the Frick\u2019s first show built around a single work of art), she now reigns supreme in the upstairs Walnut Room, and her dress is even more sumptuous than you might recall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Westmoreland cafe at the Frick (photo by \u00a9MRNY)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You can toast to all your favorite Frick friends while dining in Westmoreland<\/a>, the Frick\u2019s new caf\u00e9 named for the Frick family\u2019s private Pullman car. As for Vermeer\u2019s Love Letters<\/em>, the exhibition will remain open through 31 August 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Exterior of the Frick (photo by \u00a9MRNY)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whenever my mother was in town and the weather uncooperative, she might say to me, \u201cShall we go visit our friends at the Frick?\u201d It was her favorite museum in Manhattan, just as it is for so many others\u2014and now the Frick is back, and better than ever in its newly-refurbished home, with an inaugural exhibition featuring a triptych of Vermeer\u2019s Love Letters. … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[125,135],"tags":[4462,4463,4465,1802,4464],"class_list":["post-26510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-design","tag-frick","tag-frick-collection","tag-johannes-vermeer","tag-the-frick","tag-vermeer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Vermeers-Love-Letters.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31sdB-6TA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26510"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26523,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26510\/revisions\/26523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}