The developer Jonathan “Jack” Frost has donated a collection of nearly 700 prints to the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida. The gift is a major windfall for the Norton’s collection of European art and will increase its collection of prints by nearly 40%.
The gifted works span half a millennium, from a 1970 colour etching by Henry Moore to Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut print Die Gefangennahme Christi (The Taking of Christ, 1509-11). Also included in the gift are portraits by Anthony van Dyck and Rembrandt van Rijn from the 1630s, Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s 1748 engraving Chiesa di S. Andrea della Valle, Édouard Manet’s Jeanne (also known as Le Printemps, spring, 1882), Paul Gauguin’s Baigneuses Bretonnes (Breton Bathers, 1889) and Hannah Höch’s 1912 linocut Straße in Berlin (Street in Berlin). A selection of 75 works from the gift will go on view later this month in The Paper Trail: 500 Years of Prints from the Jonathan "Jack" Frost Collection (20 April-11 August).
Left: Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Man in Broad Brimmed Hat, 1638; right: Jean-Émile Laboureur, Le Vieux Pêcheur (The Old Fisherman), 1923 Both courtesy Norton Museum of Art. Promised Gift of the Collection of Jonathan “Jack” Frost
Frost has been involved with the Norton for more than 30 years. Appropriately, given his background in real estate and construction, he served on its Building and Grounds Committee for the better part of a decade beginning in the early 2000s. (In 2019, the Norton completed a $100m expansion.)
“I have long felt that the museum would be the perfect place for my collection. It is like a home away from home,” Frost said in a statement. He will discuss his collecting journey during a public event at the museum on 26 April.
Henri Edmond Cross, La Promenade ou Les Cypres (Landscape with Cypresses), 1897 Courtesy the Norton Museum of Art. Promised Gift of the Collection of Jonathan “Jack” Frost
“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,” the museum’s director and chief executive, Ghislain d’Humières, said in a statement. “We are grateful to Jack Frost for this incredible promised gift that fills gaps in the Norton’s collection of works on paper and greatly expands our holdings of European and American works, adding variety and breadth.”