Phillips Firsts
“The true artist needs a friend and a true patron of art has nothing better to give the world than the helping hand he extends to the lonely, lofty spirits.”
Duncan Phillips, 1929
A pioneer in many ways, Duncan Phillips—along with his wife, Marjorie Acker Phillips—had a keen enthusiasm for the art of his time, relying on his eye for great talent and promise to assemble a world-class collection. Especially inspiring was Phillips’s open-mindedness and generosity of spirit, his search for the individual artist’s unique voice, and his belief that everyone would benefit by “seeing as true artists see.”
Select First Museum to Purchase
Milton Avery, 1929
Winter Riders (1929)
Pierre Bonnard, 1925
Woman with Dog (1922)
Early Spring (1908)
Georges Braque, 1927
Plums, Pears, Nuts, and Knife (1926) [first American museum]
Charles Burchfield, 1926
Cabin in Noon Sunlight (1923)
Paul Cézanne, 1928
Self-Portrait (1878-80) [first self-portrait]
Jean Charlot, 1930
Glass, Cup and Dice (1925)
Mexican Night (1929)
Stuart Davis, 1930
Blue Café (1928)
Place des Vosges (undated)
Arthur Dove, 1926
Golden Storm (1925)
Waterfall (1925)
Jacob Kainen, 1942
Street Corner (1941)
Karl Knaths, 1926
Geranium in Night Window (1922)
Clarence John Laughlin, 1945
Grandeur and Decay, No. 1 (1944)
A Ruined Doorway (1945)
The Shadows of Peace (1945)
The Besieging Wilderness (1945)
Jacob Lawrence, 1942
The Migration Series (1940-41) [Phillips & MoMA each acquired 30 panels]
Aristide Maillol, 1927
Head of a Woman (1898) [first American museum to acquire a bronze]
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radenski), 1927
The Black Tray (1914)
Peppino Mangravite, 1926
The Adirondacks (undated)
John Marin, 1926
Black River Valley (1913)
Grey Sea (1924)
Maine Islands (1922)
Mt. Chocorua—White Mountains (1926)
Near Great Barrington (1925) [first watercolors]
Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson), 1942
Cambridge Valley (1942)
Jean Negulesco, 1928
House in Olive Trees (undated)
Olive Trees (1926)
Place Grimaldi, Cagnes (1925)
Kenneth Noland, 1951
Inside (1950)
Georgia O’Keeffe, 1926
My Shanty, Lake George (1922)
Pattern of Leaves (1924)
Alfonso Ossorio, 1951
Five Brothers (1950)
Charles Sheeler, 1926
Skyscrapers (1922) [first oil painting]
John Sloan, 1919
Clown Making Up (1909)
Nicholas de Staël, 1950
North (1949)
Augustus Vincent Tack, 1923
Storm (c. 1922-23) [first abstractions]
Rufino Tamayo, 1930
Mandolins and Pineapples (1930)
Edouard Vuillard, 1926
Intimacy (undated)
Max Weber, 1925
High Noon (1925)
James Lesesne Wells, 1931
Journey to Egypt (1931)
First Solo Museum Exhibition in the United States
- Alwar Balasubramaniam, 2011
- Pierre Bonnard, 1930
- Marc Chagall, 1942
- Sandra Cinto, 2012 (with Seattle Art Museum)
- Howard Hodgkin, 1984
- Markus Lüpertz, 2017 (with Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden)
- Alfred Manessier, 1964
- Henry Moore, 1946
- Giorgio Morandi, 1957
- Regi Müller, 2010
- Ben Nicholson, 1951
- Serge Poliakoff, 1959
- Bernardi Roig, 2014
- Zilia Sánchez, 2019
- Chaim Soutine, 1943
- Nicolas de Staël, 1953
- Maria Elena Vieira da Silva, 1961
- Keith Vaughan, 1951
A. Balasubramaniam, Intersections: Sk(in), 2011
Zilia Sánchez: Soy Isla (I Am an Island)
Bernardi Roig, The Man of the Light (2005)
A Century of Firsts
- Honoré Daumier’s The Uprising is the largest oil by the artist in North America. Phillips claimed to have acted more quickly than the Louvre in 1925 to acquire it. He believed it to be “the greatest picture in the collection” in many ways because it deals with the human condition in a monumental and universal manner. (The Uprising pictured on the left, in the Main Gallery, 1930)
- The Phillips was the only American museum actively acquiring the work of the French moderns in the 1920s, and has the largest collection of Bonnard works in any museum in North America. Other American museums were acquiring some examples during the 1920s, but between 1925 and 1930, the Phillips acquired more than 50 works by School of Paris artists, including works by Bonnard, Vuillard, Braque, Matisse, Picasso, Maillol, and more. Only the establishment of the Museum of Modern Art in 1929 gave New York a voice in the modernist revolution that rivaled the Phillips. (Bonnard’s The Palm in the original Phillips House Dining Room, 1940)
- Phillips dedicated galleries in his museum to the work of single artists. The Rothko Room in 1960, having works by Klee on nearly continuous display after 1948 in what came to be known as “the Klee Room,” The tradition of engaging contemporary artists continued in 2013 with the installation of the permanent Wax Room by German artist Wolfgang Laib. (Laib in the Wax Room, 2013)