Living Legacy

The Frye Founding Collection, established in the first decade of the twentieth century by Charles Frye (1858-1940) and his wife Emma (1860-1934), is remarkable for its quality. A first-generation American of German descent, Charles reputedly saw his first oil painting at age thirty-five in 1893. By 1909, however, it seems that the Fryes were already avid collectors, having lent a French painting to Seattle's Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, a World's Fair celebrating the development of the Pacific Northwest.

Significant purveyors of European culture in Seattle for the remainder of their lives, Charles and Emma Frye focused their collecting efforts on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century German art, a reflection of a singular moment one hundred years ago when a number of influential American collectors and museum curators sought to establish close cultural ties between Germany and America. The Frye's collection included exemplary works by the founding members of one of Europe's most influential artists' association, the Munich Secession, and important works by the generation of German artists preceding them. It also included fine French and American paintings. Charles Frye's dream to bequeath the collection to the people of Seattle became a reality in 1952 when the Frye Art Museum opened to the public.