Suzy Frelinghuysen (1911–1988)

 

Born Estelle Condit Frelinghuysen, Suzy—as she was known in the art world and to friends—was the granddaughter of Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, who served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Chester A. Arthur, and the grandniece of Theodore Frelinghuysen, the second chancellor of New York University and a U.S. Senator from New Jersey. Raised at Oakhurst, her family’s estate in Elberton, New Jersey, and in Princeton, she moved to New York at the age of 18 or 20.

As a child Frelinghuysen displayed great love for opera and took voice lessons. She did not begin to paint in earnest until her marriage to George L.K. Morris in 1935. Soon afterwards she began producing Cubist collages that often incorporate fragments of opera programs and scores. Acclaimed as a visual artist in the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s, she readily admitted that Morris had shaped her understanding of modernism. Unlike his rigorous geometric paintings, however, her collages display a certain whimsy. Her playful appropriations of passages from works by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris not only reveal a sophisticated knowledge of abstract art, but also inject wit into an abstruse artistic discipline. Joining the Abstract American Artists group soon after its founding in 1936, Frelinghuysen participated in its yearly shows. At the 1944 annual exhibition of the Whitney Museum of American art, her work was singled out as the “outstanding item of the showing.” Gallatin had acquired her collage Carmen for the Museum of Living Art in 1938, and he was planning a solo exhibition of her work for 1943. Unfortunately the museum closed before the project could be realized.

In 1947 she began a second career as a singer at the New York City Opera. At her debut in the title role in Ariadne auf Naxos she enjoyed an overnight success, earning critics’ praise as  a “sumptuous dramatic soprano.” She later received rave reviews in Tosca and continued performing with the City Opera until 1951. Throughout her dual career as artist and opera singer, Frelinghuysen emphasized the correspondences between them, stating: “In painting, you’re concerned with the arrangement of forms. On the stage, which is your frame, you’re concerned with arranging yourself. It’s like a picture, only, of course, you’re moving.”