The Fricks Collect: An American Family and the Evolution of Taste in the Gilded Age

Before his New York home became a museum, Henry Clay Frick hired some of the most important art dealers of his time to build a remarkable collection and the best decorators to create Gilded Age interiors to suit these works.

White, Allom & Co. and Elsie de Wolfe worked with Frick to decorate his homes and influenced the choice of many of the furnishings he acquired as backdrops for his paintings. As was common at the time, decorators often collaborated with dealers to create spaces suitable for valued works of art. Other influential figures who shaped the cultural landscape of the time included Frick's business partner Andrew Carnegie, and renowned art dealers Joseph Duveen in London and Charles Carstairs of M. Knoedler & Co. in New York.

Focusing on Henry Clay Frick and his daughter Helen, two central figures in the formation of the famous collection, this book traces the journey that led to the creation of one of America's finest art collections. It presents the rooms of their homes and the masterpieces that adorn the walls of the Frick Collection, testifying to the enduring appeal of art and the power of patronage in shaping cultural institutions.