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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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Child with a Brown Hat

Ludwig von Zumbusch
Pigment and varnish on pressboard
ca. 1905

Child with a Brown Tam O'Shanter

Ludwig von Zumbusch
Dry pigment and varnish on paperboard
ca. 1905

Children by the Sea

Ludwig von Zumbusch
Pigment and varnish on pressboard
n.d.

Children with a Ball

Ludwig von Zumbusch
Pigment and varnish on pressboard
ca. 1904

Children with a Bird's Nest

Ludwig von Zumbusch
Dry pigment and varnish on paperboard
n.d.

Children with a Bowl

Ludwig von Zumbusch
Dry pigment and varnish on paperboard
ca. 1912

Girl by a Brook

Ludwig von Zumbusch
Dry pigment and varnish on paperboard
1920

Girls Dancing

Ludwig von Zumbusch
Dry pigment and medium on cardboard
ca. 1910-12

Gretel

Ludwig von Zumbusch
Dry pigment and varnish on paperboard
n.d.

Harvesters

Ludwig von Zumbusch
Oil and dry pigment on cardboard
n.d.

Head of Child

Ludwig von Zumbusch
Dry pigment and varnish on paperboard
n.d.