Selected Images

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  The Small Bather, 1826
  The Small Bather, 1826

  Jean‑Auguste‑Dominique Ingres
  French, 1780–1867
  The Small Bather, 1826
  Oil on canvas
  Acquired 1948

  Jean‑Auguste‑Dominique Ingres painted many variations on the subject of the seated bather seen from behind. The Small Bather is unique in Ingres’s oeuvre because it includes a landscape setting, perhaps a reflection of the artist’s admiration for Old Master painters. His ability to forsake anatomical accuracy for pure line is evident in the figure of this woman, whose back seems stretched beyond natural proportions. Duncan Phillips often would hang The Small Bather with Delacroix’s Paganini (also displayed in the same gallery) to contrast the precise line of Ingres’s neoclassicism with the dramatic brushwork of Delacroix’s Romanticism.

• 
  The Spanish Ballet, 1862
  The Spanish Ballet, 1862

  Édouard Manet
  French, 1832–1883
  The Spanish Ballet, 1862
  Oil on canvas
  Acquired 1928

  Phillips recognized Édouard Manet as one of the pivotal sources of modern art. By 1926, Phillips had begun searching for a figure painting by Manet. Two years later, he learned of a group of important paintings, including this one, and acted immediately to acquire it through the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel for $110,000. This painting reflects Manet’s fascination with Spanish art and culture. It shows the principal dancers from the Royal Theater of Madrid, onstage as if in a performance, but does not describe a specific scene. Instead, it is a carefully constructed studio composition.

• 
  The Uprising (L’Émeute), 1848 or later
  The Uprising (L’Émeute), 1848 or later

  Honoré Daumier
  French, 1808–1879
  The Uprising (L’Émeute), 1848 or later
  Oil on canvas
  Acquired 1925

  “[Daumier’s] … material, the drama of the streets, was romantic and so was his rebellion against the authorities in his choice of that material and his protest against the evils of his time.”
  —Duncan Phillips

  Duncan Phillips was among the earliest American collectors to champion the art of Honoré Daumier. He referred to him in 1926 as one of the greatest artists of the 1800s. When this long-forgotten painting appeared on the market in 1925, Phillips seized the opportunity to acquire it. On more than one occasion he referred to it as his favorite and as the greatest picture in the collection.

• 
  The Road to Vétheuil, 1879
  The Road to Vétheuil, 1879

  Claude Monet
  French, 1840–1926
  The Road to Vétheuil, 1879
  Oil on canvas
  Acquired 1920

  Claude Monet had established his first steady home in Argenteuil, outside of Paris, in 1872. Distraught by a lack of sales and mounting debts, he moved with his family in 1878 to Vétheuil, another village farther down the Seine from the capital. There he spent three years refining his technique and extending his practice of painting canvases in series that show the same views in different seasons and at different times of day. Duncan Phillips listed The Road to Vétheuil among his fifteen best purchases of 1918–1919.

• 
  Entrance to the Public Gardens at Arles, 1888
  Entrance to the Public Gardens at Arles, 1888

  Vincent van Gogh
  Dutch, 1853–1890
  Entrance to the Public Gardens at Arles, 1888
  Oil on canvas
  Acquired 1930

  After two years in Paris, Vincent van Gogh left for Arles in February 1888. He had dreams of creating a community of artists under the leadership of Paul Gauguin and, for this purpose, rented a small yellow house. Van Gogh painted this view of the entrance to the park opposite the yellow house between August and October 1888, when he was eagerly awaiting Gauguin’s arrival and the start of their artistic collaboration. In September 1930, Phillips received the painting on approval from the Wildenstein Gallery in New York and acted immediately to purchase it. To Phillips it was “an outcry of the soul.”

• 
  Ginger Pot with Pomegranate and Pears, 1893
  Ginger Pot with Pomegranate and Pears, 1893

  Paul Cézanne
  French, 1839–1906
  Ginger Pot with Pomegranate and Pears, 1893
  Oil on canvas
  Gift of Gifford Phillips in memory of his father, James Laughlin Phillips, 1939

  In the mid-1920s, Duncan Phillips was searching for a still-life painting by Paul Cézanne. After seeing Ginger Pot with Pomegranate and Pears at The Museum of Modern Art’s inaugural exhibition in 1929, and again at Wildenstein Gallery in New York in February 1930, Phillips borrowed it for an exhibition. For Phillips, the solidity of the shapes and forms in this painting recalled Chardin’s dignified still-life arrangements. Phillips’s nephew, Gifford, presented it as a gift to the museum in 1939. The painting was once owned by Monet, to whom the artist had given it.

• 
  Dancers at the Barre, ca. 1900
  Dancers at the Barre, ca. 1900

  Edgar Degas
  French, 1834–1917
  Dancers at the Barre, ca. 1900
  Oil on canvas
  Acquired 1944

  “Degas tells the truth about toe-dancing, the illusion and the disillusion of it.”
  —Duncan Phillips

  During the last years of his career, Degas’s use of line became more expressive and his colors more brilliant. In this painting, he captured a behind-the-scenes look at dancers at a studio on the rue Le Peletier, where he frequently sketched. This work is one of his last representations of a dancer with her leg propped on the practice barre. Phillips affirmed that “in its monumentality it is unique among all his decorations celebrating the arabesques and occupational anatomy of ballet dancers.”

• 
  Studio, Quai Saint‑Michel, 1916
  Studio, Quai Saint‑Michel, 1916

  Henri Matisse
  French, 1869–1954
  Studio, Quai Saint‑Michel, 1916
  Oil on canvas
  Acquired 1940

  In an austere image of his own working environment, Henri Matisse contemplated the themes of the artist’s studio: the picture within a picture, the artist and his model, and the open window. Simplified verticals and horizontals suggest the architecture of the apartment in the heart of Paris where Matisse worked during the late winter and early spring months of World War I. One of four paintings Matisse made of this studio, the artist implied his presence here with the picture propped on a chair, as on an easel. Phillips purchased this work from Pierre Matisse Gallery and lauded it as a landmark of modern art.

• 
  Autumn II, 1912
  Autumn II, 1912

  Wassily Kandinsky
  French, born Russia, 1866–1935
  Autumn II, 1912
  Oil on canvas
  Acquired 1945

  Wassily Kandinsky was a pioneer of abstract art. He conceived Autumn II while writing his treatise on abstraction, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Using vibrant, abstract forms, Kandinsky presented an autumn day by a lake in the Bavarian Alps near the village of Murnau. He schematized the landscape to lay bare nature’s essential elements. This work expresses Kandinsky’s ideas on the psychological and symbolic power of expressive color. He connected the yellow to “the last forces of summer in the brilliant foliage of autumn … the blue to infinity … and the green to calm.”

• 
  Woman with Green Hat, 1939
  Woman with Green Hat, 1939

  Pablo Picasso
  Spanish, 1881–1973
  Woman with Green Hat, 1939
  Oil on canvas
  Gift of the Carey Walker Foundation, 1994

  In 1935, Picasso met Dora Maar, a young Surrealist photographer. In Picasso’s portraits of her from 1938 and early 1939, Maar’s face undergoes wrenching distortions, and she is often shown weeping, perhaps a reflection of their tumultuous relationship. Woman with Green Hat is a break from that tension. The head’s sculptural form harkens back to Picasso’s interest in the art of non-Western cultures, while the wistful expression of the eyes and the grayish-blue and pink of Maar’s complexion suggest the artist’s Rose Period (1904–1906).

• 
  Still Life with Grapes and Clarinet, 1927
  Still Life with Grapes and Clarinet, 1927

  Georges Braque
  French, 1882–1963
  Still Life with Grapes and Clarinet, 1927
  Oil on canvas

  The Phillips Collection is unique among museums of modern art in placing greater emphasis on the work of Braque than that of Picasso. Phillips was convinced that Braque’s art would better stand the test of time because it satisfied three criteria that were important to the museum founder: classicism, personal vision, and continuity with French tradition. Among the many allusions to the sense of touch in this painting are the marble and wood grain surfaces that Braque simulated in paint. Mesmerized by these effects, Phillips negotiated with New York dealer Paul Reinhardt. He finally purchased this work for $5,400 in December 1929.

• 
  Family Group, 1946
  Family Group, 1946

  Henry Moore
  British, 1898–1986
  Family Group, 1946
  Bronze
  Acquired 1947

  Henry Moore’s postwar semi-abstract sculptures are informed by primitive art, Egyptian and Mexican sculpture, and the human figure. Family Group was inspired by Moore’s wartime drawings of sheltering families in London’s Underground. It also reflects his impressions on the birth of his daughter that year. Moore’s use of bronze, a relatively new medium to him at the time, brought a more fluid and deeply felt emotion to this symbol of family closeness. The year this sculpture was created, Duncan Phillips gave Moore his first museum exhibition in America.