The collection at the Norton Museum of Art just became a lot bigger. Thanks to a nearly 700-piece gift from art collector Jonathan “Jack” Frost, the institution’s print holdings are set to increase by almost 40 percent.
Works by Marc Chagall, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet and paul gauguin are part of Frost’s donation, which spans 500 years of European and American printmaking. “Throughout the years, Jack has carefully curated his collection to trace the history of printmaking in Europe and America, featuring both well- and little-known masters, as well as highly talented artists,” said Ghislain d’Humières, director and CEO of the Norton Museum, in a statement.
The works on paper are expected to substantially bolster the Florida-based museum’s holdings of European art between the 15th and 18th Centuries. Highlights from the gift will be exhibited from April 20 through August 11 in “The Paper Trail: 500 Years of Prints from the Jonathan ‘Jack’ Frost Collection,” which will display some 75 works ranging from woodcuts, lithography and etchings.
The exhibition will showcase the range of prints collected by Frost by distinguishing them into distinct artistic periods. Works from the Renaissance period include an early 16th-century piece by German artist Albrecht Dürer, which is the exhibition’s oldest print. Rembrandt van Rijn’s 1638 Man in Broad Brimmed Hat and Anthony Van Dyck’s 1630 Portrait of Frans Snyders will be included in the Baroque section, while landscapes, cityscapes and images of animals can be found in the Rococo and Neoclassicism section.
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Manet’s 1882 Jeanne and Gauguin’s 1889 Breton Bathers will be in section dedicated to realism and impressionism from the 1800s onwards. And the newest print in Frost’s collection, Two Seated Figures by Henry Moore from 1970, will be in the section dedicated to 20th-century works by modern artists.
Frost was inspired by another philanthropic art collector
The collecting practices of Frost, who heads the consulting company Commerce Consulting Inc., were encouraged by fellow arts patron Dorothy Braude Edinburg. A prominent art collector and dealer who died in 2016, Edinburg inspired Frost to pay special attention to artists classified as “peintres-graveurs,” a term used for artists who engaged with printmaking as its own art form.
Edinburg, also a notable collector of prints, made a similar gift in 2013 to the Art Institute of Chicago when she donated nearly 800 works to the museum. The institution also later received $35 million from the late collector in 2016—at the time, the most significant monetary gift in its history.
Frost has long had close ties to the Norton Museum. He first visited the institution in the 1980s and later sought research from the museum as he began building his collection a decade later. The philanthropist was additionally a member of the museum’s building and grounds committee in the early 2000s and played a prominent part in supporting the institution in the aftermath of Hurricane Frances and Hurricane Jeanne in 2004.
“I have been honored to be involved with the renowned Norton Museum of Art in a variety of ways for nearly four decades now, and I have long felt that the museum would be the perfect place for my collection,” said Frost in a statement. “It is like a home away from home.”
