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Founding Collection

The Founding Collection reflects the distinctive vision of museum founders Charles and Emma Frye and celebrates late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century European and American art. The children of German immigrants, the Fryes became prominent business leaders and patrons of the arts after settling in Seattle in 1888. Their collection of 232 oil paintings, almost half of which features German artists, was formed during the years around 1900. Charles and Emma Frye developed their passion for art at the Columbian Exposition, a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893. The experience had a great influence on the painterly subjects and artists the couple would collect in years to come. Over the next four decades, the Fryes acquired paintings while traveling abroad in Europe and from auctions, most notably those of American collections formed by Hugo Reisinger and Josef Stránský. The Fryes famously hung their paintings floor to ceiling, salon style, in a specially built gallery space attached to their home on First Hill. Beyond Germany, the Fryes collected works by artists from Austria, Denmark, England, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, and the United States. Highlights include works by two generations of artists from Munich—those of the Münchener Künstlergenossenschaft (Munich Artist’s Association) such as Franz von Defregger, Franz von Lenbach, Wilhelm Leibl, and Friedrich August von Kaulbach—and artists who formed the Munich Secession including Ludwig Dill, Hugo von Habermann, Otto Hierl-Deronco, Franz von Stuck, Wilhelm Trübner, Fritz von Uhde, and Heinrich von Zügel. Other notable works include paintings by Eugène Boudin, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Lillian Genth, Gabriel von Max, and Mihály de Munkácsy. The Founding Collection continues to serve as a catalyst for artistic inquiry at the Frye Art Museum in exhibitions that reframe its works and history through a lens of contemporary scholarship.

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Title Artist Medium Date
Girls Dancing   Zumbusch, Ludwig von   Dry pigment and medium on cardboard  ca. 1910-12 
Gretel   Zumbusch, Ludwig von   Dry pigment and varnish on paperboard  n.d. 
Girl by a Brook   Zumbusch, Ludwig von   Dry pigment and varnish on paperboard  1920 
Child with a Brown Tam O'Shanter   Zumbusch, Ludwig von   Dry pigment and varnish on paperboard  ca. 1905 
The Secret   Zumbusch, Ludwig von   Dry pigment and varnish on paperboard  n.d. 
The Bird Lover   Zumbusch, Ludwig von   Dry pigment and varnish on paperboard  n.d. 
Head of Child   Zumbusch, Ludwig von   Dry pigment and varnish on paperboard  n.d. 
Children with a Bowl   Zumbusch, Ludwig von   Dry pigment and varnish on paperboard  ca. 1912 
Children with a Bird's Nest   Zumbusch, Ludwig von   Dry pigment and varnish on paperboard  n.d. 
Dancing Girls in the Garden--Bacchanalia   Kaulbach, Friedrich August von   Gouache on canvas  1899 
Mother's Joy   Zumbusch, Ludwig von   Oil and dry pigment on cardboard  ca. 1895-1900 
Harvesters   Zumbusch, Ludwig von   Oil and dry pigment on cardboard  n.d. 
Little Hans   Zumbusch, Ludwig von   Oil and dry pigment on cardboard  ca. 1906-08 
Old Man Asleep with Sheep   Zügel, Heinrich von   Oil on canvas  1870s 
Landscape with Stream   Gorter, Arnold   Oil on canvas  n.d. 
Charles H. Frye   Raschen, Henry   Oil on canvas  1913 
Flight of Love   Bouguereau, William-Adolphe   Oil on canvas  1901 
Emma Lamp Frye   Raschen, Henry   Oil on canvas  1913 
Sun Maiden   Genth, Lillian   Oil on canvas  ca. 1909 
Dans les bois (In the Woods)   Bouguereau, William-Adolphe   Oil on canvas  1905 
View of Corsica   Corrodi, Hermann   Oil on canvas  ca. 1890 
Pointers in the Woods, Autumn   Califano, John   Oil on canvas  ca. 1905 
Trüber Wintertag (Cloudy Winter Day)   Petuel, Rudolph   Oil on canvas  1913 
Four in Hand   Speyer, Christian   Oil on canvas  1911 
Morning on the Hills, Loch Tay, Perthshire   Watson Junior, William   Oil on canvas  1910 


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