On Collecting Art: Duncan Phillips

The Repntant St. Peter, c. 1600-1605
El Greco


Deer In The Forest, 1913
Franz Marc

Asheville, 1948

Franz Marc

Duncan Phillips was a pioneer in history of American Art collecting. The legacy of his efforts make up a remarkable dialogue of French Impressionist and American modernism of the early part of the 20th Century.

Luncheon Of The Boating Party; Auguste Renoir

Phillips was ambitious in his appreciative endeavours of art. In the 1920's he pursued collecting, founding a museum, and art criticism. The results were are rich contribution to American scholarship and a national treasure trove of important paintings and scultptures.

For Phillips, the collection and the writing existed in a symbiotic relationship- verbalized aesthetic ideas as counterparts of the visual perceptions that initiated a profound movement adding insight and sympathy for pictorial and decorative art that continues to be a sincere, inspiring gift.

"I bring together congenial spirits among the artists from different parts of the world and from different periods of time and I trace their common descent from old masters who anticipated modern ideas. ...Thus I demonstrate two things-- the antiquity of modern ideas [and] the modernity of some of the old masters, and I prove... that art is the universal language which defies classification according to any chronological or national order" -Phillips Collection In The Making