Painting to Painting: Finding Familiar Faces

While working in Texas last month, I had the good fortune to visit the Dallas Museum of Art. I found a few paintings that reminded me of works from The Phillips Collection, and thought they made nice pairings.

Robert Henri, (left) Dutch Girl, 1910/reworked 1913, 1919. Oil on canvas, 24 1/4 x 20 1/4 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1920 (right) Dutch Girl Laughing, 1907. Oil on canvas, 32 x 26 1/4 in. Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Art Association Purchase

In the summers of 1907 and 1910, Robert Henri traveled to Haarlem, The Netherlands, where he painted many portraits of the local people, including these two works which may be the same sitter. Henri described young Cori here as “a little white headed broad faced red cheeked girl…always laughing.”

Edward Hicks ,(left) The Peaceable Kingdom, between 1845 and 1846. Oil on canvas, 24 1/8 x 32 1/8 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1939 (right) The Peaceable Kingdom, c. 1846-1847. Oil on canvas, 24 x 31 1/8 in. Dallas Museum of Art, The Art Museum League Fund

Edward Hicks painted more than one hundred versions of this subject, which illustrates his favorite biblical passage—Isaiah’s prophecy (Isaiah 11:6-9), an allegory of spiritual and earthly harmony.

George Bellows, (left) Emma at the Window, 1920. Oil on canvas, 41 1/4 x 34 3/8 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1924 (right) Emma, 1920-1923. Oil on canvas, 63 x 51 in. Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Art Association Purchase

Between 1911 and 1924, George Bellows painted eleven portraits of his wife, Emma Story Bellows (1884–1959). The works from the 1920s were created in Woodstock, New York, where the couple summered. These mature portraits reflect Bellows’s admiration for the Old Masters, Thomas Eakins, and contemporary color theories.

John Marin, (left) The Sea, Cape Split, Maine, 1939. Oil on canvas, 24 1/4 x 29 1/4 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1940 (right) Bathers, 1932. Oil on canvas, 22 1/4 x 28 1/2 in. Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Algur H. Meadows and the Meadows Foundation, Incorporated

After establishing himself in the 1920s as the world’s foremost watercolorist, John Marin began painting oils in the 1930s. These paintings reveal Marin’s renowned ability to capture his immediate impression of a powerful seascape along the rocky Maine coast.

Renée Maurer, Associate Curator

A Modern Vision at the Kimbell

Phillips Director Dorothy Kosinski admires the newly installed A Modern Vision. From left to right: George Rouault’s Verlaine (1939), Alberto Giacometti’s Monumental Head (1960), Georges Braque’s The Round Table (1929), and Nicolas de Staël’s Le Parc de Sceaux (1952). Photo: Susan Behrends Frank

My first two weeks of May were spent with the terrific staff at Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. Together, we condition checked and installed the travelling exhibition A Modern Vision: European Masterworks from The Phillips Collection. Highlighting Duncan Phillips’s collecting approach, the exhibition presents a stunning array of iconic European paintings and sculptures. It features the artists Phillips revered who achieved the mastery of color, the power of great emotion, and the balance of representation and abstraction. Works by Jean-Siméon-Baptiste Chardin, Gustave Courbet, Eugene Delacroix, and Édouard Manet are placed in dialogue with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces by Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Claude Monet. The great masters of the 20th century including Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso are shown with units of work by Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Paul Cézanne, Honoré Daumier, and Paul Klee. On May 11, Phillips Director Dorothy Kosinski and curator Susan Behrends Frank joined me at the exhibition opening; on May 13, Frank gave a lecture on the exhibition to 400 visitors. See this exhibition in the Kimbell’s Renzo Piano Pavilion through August 13.

Renée Maurer, Associate Curator

Oskar Kokoschka’s Portrait of Lotte Franzos (1909) next to a maquette before the placement of the sculpture Head of a Woman (1950) by Pablo Picasso. Photo: Renée Maurer

Installation of Ingres’s The Seated Bather (1826) beside Corot’s View from the Farnese Gardens, Rome (1826) and Genzano (1843). Photo: Renée Maurer

Installation view of A Modern Vision at the Kimbell Art Museum

Installation view of A Modern Vision at the Kimbell Art Museum

Installation view of A Modern Vision at the Kimbell Art Museum

Installation view of A Modern Vision at the Kimbell Art Museum

Installation view of A Modern Vision at the Kimbell Art Museum

Installation view of A Modern Vision at the Kimbell Art Museum

 

Phillips Flashback: A Man of Many Lists

list of works_Duncan Phillips

From The Phillips Collection Archives

Museum founder Duncan Phillips loved making lists. He often created lists that ranked individual works of art. In a document dated 1919-1920, prior to the museum’s opening in 1921, he put Claude Monet in third place and American painter John Twachtman in first on a list titled “15 Best Purchases of 1918-19.”

On the back of an important letter to Thomas Bower (below) about the late art collector John Quinn, Phillips scrawled a list that included baby dresses, laundry, roast chicken, chicken aspic jelly, and ice cream.

shopping list_Duncan Phillips

From The Phillips Collection Archives