THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) – How do you say “thank you” to a museum that loaned you Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring” and Carel Fabritius’ “The Goldfinch” for a blockbuster exhibition?
New York’s Frick Collection is displaying its gratitude to the Mauritshuis by sending over a trove of masterpieces of its own for the first art show in a new wing for temporary exhibitions that was added to the intimate Hague museum during its recent renovation.
Among 36 works that crossed the Atlantic to the Mauritshuis are Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ striking portrait of the doe-eyed Comtesse d’Haussonville, gazing out of the canvas, her chin resting on her left index finger.
Other highlights include John Constable’s “The White Horse” and Jacob van Ruisdael’s “Landscape With a Footbridge,” a 1652 masterpiece that was restored especially for the exhibition titled The Frick Collection-Art Treasures from New York that opened Thursday and runs until May 10.
It is not only paintings that have made their way to the Mauritshuis, a historic mansion in the center of The Hague that reopened last year after major reconstruction and extension work.