Duncan Phillips was a Washington, DC, based art collector and critic who played a seminal role in introducing America to modern art

Modern art

Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...

. The grandson of James H. Laughlin

James H. Laughlin

James H. Laughlin was a pioneer of the iron and steel industry in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was born March 1, 1806 near Portaferry in County Down.-Steel industry:He became a junior partner of the iron business of Benjamin Franklin Jones in 1857...

, a banker and co-founder of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company, Phillips was born in Pittsburgh and moved with his family to Washington, D.C. in 1895.

Art collector and critic

Phillips, along with his mother, established the precursor of The Phillips Collection, The Phillips Memorial Gallery, after the sudden deaths of his father, Duncan Clinch Phillips (1838–1917), a Pittsburgh window glass millionaire, and brother, James Laughlin Phillips (May 30, 1884–1918).

Beginning with a small family collection of paintings, Phillips, a published art critic, expanded the collection dramatically. From the beginning Phillips conceived of his museum as "a memorial…a beneficent force in the community where I live—a joy-giving, life-enhancing influence, assisting people to see beautifully as true artists see."

Phillips married painter Marjorie Acker

Marjorie Acker

Marjorie Acker was a Washington, D.C. based artist and the niece of artists Gifford and Reynolds Beal.She grew up in Ossining, New York....

 in 1921. With her assistance and advice, Phillips developed his collection "as a museum of modern art and its sources," believing strongly in the continuum of artists influencing their successors through the centuries. His focus on the continuous tradition of art was revolutionary at a time when America was largely critical of modernism

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

, which was seen as a break with the past. Phillips collected works by masters such as El Greco

El Greco

El Greco was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" was a nickname, a reference to his ethnic Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος .El Greco was born on Crete, which was at...

, calling him the "first impassioned expressionist"; Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin was an 18th-century French painter. He is considered a master of still life, and is also noted for his genre paintings which depict kitchen maids, children, and domestic activities...

 because he was "the first modern painter"; Francisco Goya

Francisco Goya

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...

 because he was "the stepping stone between the Old Masters and the Great Moderns like Cézanne

Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...

"; and Edouard Manet

Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....

, a "significant link in a chain which began with Goya and which [led] to Gauguin

Paul Gauguin

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...

 and Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

."
From the 1920s to the 1960s, Phillips would re-hang his galleries in installations that were non-chronological and non-traditional, reflecting the relationships he saw between various artistic expressions. He presented visual connections—between past and present, between classical form and romantic expression—as dialogues on the walls of the museum. Giving equal focus to American and European artists, Phillips juxtaposed works by Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art....

, Thomas Eakins

Thomas Eakins

Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator...

, Maurice Prendergast

Maurice Prendergast

Maurice Brazil Prendergast was an American Post-Impressionist artist who worked in oil, watercolor, and monotype...

, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and Albert Pinkham Ryder

Albert Pinkham Ryder

Albert Pinkham Ryder was an American painter best known for his poetic and moody allegorical works and seascapes, as well as his eccentric personality...

 with canvases by Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of Les Nabis.-Biography:...

, Peter Ilsted

Peter Ilsted

Peter Ilsted was a leading Danish artist and printmaker. Ilsted, Carl Holsoe and Ilsted’s brother-in-law, Vilhelm Hammershøi, were the leading artists in early 20th century Denmark. All three artists were members of ‘The Free Exhibition’, a progressive art society created around 1890. They are...

 and Edouard Vuillard

Édouard Vuillard

Jean-Édouard Vuillard was a French painter and printmaker associated with the Nabis.-Early years and education:...

. He exhibited watercolors by John Marin

John Marin

John Marin was an early American modernist artist. He is known for his abstract landscapes and watercolors.-Biography:...

 with paintings by Cézanne, and works by van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...

 with El Greco’s The Repentant St. Peter (circa 1600–05). Phillips’ vision brought together "congenial spirits among the artists," and his ideas still guide the museum today.

Throughout his lifetime, Phillips had the prescience and courage to acquire paintings by many artists who were not fully recognized at the time, among them Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American artist.Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists...

, Arthur Dove

Arthur Dove

Arthur Garfield Dove was an American artist. An early American modernist, he is often considered the first American abstract painter.-Youth and education:...

, Nicolas de Staël

Nicolas de Staël

Nicolas de Staël was a painter known for his use of a thick impasto and his highly abstract landscape painting...

, Milton Avery

Milton Avery

Milton Avery was an American modern painter. Born in Altmar, New York, he moved to Connecticut in 1898 and later to New York City.-Biography:...

 and Augustus Vincent Tack

Augustus Vincent Tack

Augustus Vincent Tack was an American painter of portraits, landscapes and abstractions.-Early years:Tack was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and moved with his family to New York in 1883. After graduating from St. Francis Xavier College in New York City in 1890, Tack studied at the Art Students...

. By purchasing works by such promising but unknown artists, Phillips provided them with the means to continue painting. He formed close bonds with and subsidized several artists who are prominently featured in the collection—Dove and Marin in particular—and consistently purchased works by artists and students for what he called his "encouragement collection."

There is a Duncan Phillips story that is worth recounting. The founder is standing with Dr. Albert C. Barnes

Albert C. Barnes

Albert Coombs Barnes was an American chemist and art collector. With the fortune made from the development of the antiseptic, anti-blindness drug Argyrol, he founded the Barnes Foundation, an educational institution based on his private collection of art...

, before the Renoir masterpiece "Luncheon of the Boating Party" (see illustration). "That's the only Renoir you have, isn't it?" asked the fearsome Dr. Barnes, whose distinctive collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist fine art contains scores of Renoirs and is now the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Phillips's reply was succinct: "It's the only one I need.”

When Duncan Phillips died in 1966, Marjorie succeeded him as museum director. Their son, Laughlin, became director in 1972. He led The Phillips Collection through a multi-year program to ensure the physical and financial security of the collection, renovate and enlarge the museum buildings, expand and professionalize the staff, conduct research on the collection, and make the Phillips more accessible to the public.

External links

• Biography (The Phillips Collection)