The Frick Collection Special Exhibit.

10-23-13 SHORT HILLS: We had a nice afternoon in the city at the Frick Collection. The museum is the house, its furnishings and art of Henry Clay Frick and his family. He was a coal and steel baron and partner of Andrew Carnegie who built this house on a whole block of Fifth Avenue between 70th and 71th Streets.

In addition to their regular collection, they have a special exhibition of Dutch paintings from the Gallery Mauritshuis. Including Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring and works by Rembrandt, Steen, Hals, ter Bosch, Claesz, Fabritius and a few others. A small picture, The Goldfinch, touched me the most. It is a European goldfinch, rather different from the American one and, as you can see, a captive.

The magnificent regular collection has several Turners, Gainsboroughs and Constables among many others, and Holbein’s portraits of More and Cromwell, for Hilary Mantel fans. We’ve been there before, but it’s worth regular visits for the setting as well as the art.

After the museum, we aired out in Central Park before dinner at Café Boulud.


The Frick Collection center courtyard is enclosed and outfitted with a fountain and statuary.

Another view of the indoor pond.

Goldfinch, European, distantly related to the American species. The red face is totally different from our finch's. This seventeenth century Dutch bird is a captive as you can see.

Central Park at 76th St and 5th Ave, with an outdoor pond with mallards.