You can help The Frick Collection and Frick Art Reference Library Archives make historical documents more searchable and accessible by transcribing digitized materials. The Art Collecting Files of Henry Clay Frick were recently digitized and are now available online thanks to a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. To enhance the research value of this collection, we need your help in transcribing these items. You are welcome to transcribe as a guest, or create an account if you wish to keep track of your work. Have questions? You’ll find tips for transcription on this site, or you can contact us directly.

Current Collections

Henry Clay Frick's Correspondence with Andrew Carnegie, 1882-1898

Contains letters, telegrams, enclosures, and notes during the time of Frick's involvement with the Carnegie Steel Co. While this is not a complete record of their correspondence, these items span almost the entire working relationship of the two men.



Acquisitions from the J.P. Morgan Collection, 1915-1920, undated

After J.P. Morgan's death in 1913, Frick acquired Fragonard's "Progress of Love" series, along with porcelains, sculpture, Limoges enamels, and furnishings from the late collector's estate through Duveen Brothers. These materials document the selection, valuation, and payment arrangements for these purchases.



Art Purchase Files, 1881-1921, undated

Consisting of invoices and financial documents, correspondence with art dealers, banks, advisers, and others, notes, and printed material, these materials document Henry Clay Frick’s art acquisitions from 1881 through his death in 1919.



Bill Book No. 2, 1897-1916

Contains invoices, correspondence, provenance information, telegrams, and newspaper clippings, with an index in the front of the volume. This volume documents purchases and other art-related matters from 1897-1916. Correspondents include Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret, William A. Coffin, Duveen Brothers, Ehrich Galleries, Roger Fry, Charles Knoedler and Roland Knoedler of M. Knoedler and Co., Joseph Lindon Smith, Edmund Tarbell, and Fritz Thaulow.

  

Catalogs and Works Exhibited, 1906-[1925]

This series contains information about paintings loaned for public exhibition at museums, galleries, societies, and for fundraising purposes during the first World War. Among the institutions to whom Frick lent paintings are the Metropolitan Museum of Art and M. Knoedler & Co., both in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts and the Copley Society, both located in Boston.  This series also contains published and unpublished catalogs of Frick's collection.