Collection of French masterpieces to be shown at the Frick Pittsburgh

The Frick Pittsburgh in Point Breeze will present “Van Gogh, Monet, Degas: The Mellon Collection of French Art” next year from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond.

The exhibition, featuring more than 70 masterpieces collected by Pittsburgh-born collector and philanthropist Paul Mellon, will be on view March 17 through July 8, 2018.

The Frick will be the first of a select group of museums to present this touring exhibition, which includes three works by Vincent Van Gogh — “The Laundry Boat on the Seine at Asnières,” “Daisies, Arles” and “The Wheat Field behind St. Paul’s Hospital, St. Rémy.” Claude Monet is represented by four works in the show, including a large work capturing the dazzling irises in his garden at Giverny, and 10 works by Degas are featured — including the artist’s most famous sculpture, “The Little Dancer.”

Renowned as one of the great art collectors of the 20th century, Paul Mellon was the son of Henry Clay Frick’s close friend and colleague, Andrew Mellon (1855–1937).

Paul Mellon’s life-long love of art resulted in large gifts to three institutions he held dear: the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; Yale University, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Mellon served as a trustee of the Virginia museum for 41 years, from 1939–1979, and in 1985 was instrumental in the construction of a new wing to house his collection of British, American and French sporting art and works by French artists of the Romantic, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist periods.

The exhibit, covering more than 150 years of French art, includes a beautiful and intimate group of Impressionist paintings by Édouard Manet, Pierre August Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro, as well as iconic works by Romantic masters Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix and the Post-Impressionist and modernist work of Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Pierre Bonnard.

“We are delighted to have the rare opportunity to present this extraordinary collection of French art to Pittsburgh at The Frick Art Museum — not far from Paul Mellon’s birthplace,” Frick Executive Director Robin Nicholson said in a news release. “In addition to its core of stunning Impressionist paintings, Van Gogh, Monet, Degas will dazzle audiences with masterpieces from every important school of French art from Romanticism through the School of Paris.

“A number of works included in the exhibition were only recently given to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and have not been seen publicly for a generation,” Nicholson said.

Details: 412-371-0600 or TheFrickPittsburgh.org