Exhibition note

Were one to stroll through The Frick Collection, bedazzled by its many masterpieces and paying only nominal attention to the requisite wall labels, one might mistake the twelve paintings included in the exhibition “Masterpieces of European Painting from the Toledo Museum of Art” as part of the Frick’s permanent collection. Walking in to it is, in fact, a transition so seamless it’s no transition at all. Certainly, the fineness of the works from Toledo is in keeping with what we’ve come to expect from the Frick. Colin B. Bailey, Chief Curator at the Frick, and Lawrence W. Nichols, Curator of European Painting and Sculpture before 1900 at the Toledo Museum, have organized the exhibition with an eye toward locating correspondences between the Toledo paintings and those in the Frick’s collection. We can, for example, compare Toledo’s Syndics of the Amsterdam Goldsmiths Guild, a 1627 canvas by the Dutch painter...