Duncan Phillips

American, 1886 - 1966

Explore Selected Works

A young and older man, both with pale skin, stand next to each other in shadowy room looking at a piece of white paper held by the older man in this vertical painting. Light from the upper left falls across the men, and they take up most of the height of the composition. The paper is held by a balding, elderly man at the center of the painting. He wears a knee-length, dark brown jacket and trousers. His has a gray beard and hair, and thin black lines delineate his brows and trace the creases on his face. A younger man standing to our left has short black hair and ruddy skin. He tilts his head to gaze at the paper in the older man’s hands. The younger man wears a sage-green jacket, and his lower body is partially hidden by a wooden rack before him. The V-shaped rack supports an open, dark green portfolio folder, and the young man rests his hands on the edges of more sheets of paper there. There are two paintings hanging on the olive-green wall of the room to each side of the men, but they are loosely painted and deep in shadow, so the subjects are difficult to make out. Another aquamarine-blue folder rests against a red bed or sofa that runs along the back wall. A white, folded cloth sits on the sofa above the portfolio. The artist signed the lower left, “h. Daumier.”
Honoré Daumier, Advice to a Young Artist, 1865/1868, oil on canvas, Gift of Duncan Phillips, 1941.6.1

Advice to a Young Artist

Honoré Daumier · 1865/1868 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1941.6.1

Augustus Vincent Tack, Charles Evans Hughes, 1941, oil on canvas board, Gift of Duncan Phillips, 1942.1.1

Charles Evans Hughes

Augustus Vincent Tack · 1941 · oil on canvas board ·  Accession ID  1942.1.1

Henri Fantin-Latour, Portrait of Sonia, 1890, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.145

Portrait of Sonia

Henri Fantin-Latour · 1890 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.145

Five men and boy, all with pale skin, crowd around a book of music propped on a wooden stand on a piano or similar instrument in this horizontal painting. Light falls across the scene from high to our left. The boy is closest to us, in the lower left corner. Shown from the shoulders up, he holds an open book but looks up at the keyboardist. His lips are mouth parted and his face deep in shadow. Three of the men appear to sing, one plays a bassoon, and the keyboardist plays with grim determination, his downturned lips pressed tightly together. The keyboardist’s eyebrows are lowered under a high forehead. He wears a long, gray wig and a gray jacket. The bassoonist is over his shoulder to our left. He appears to be bald or balding and wears a frilly white cravat tucked into an ochre-yellow vest. His eyes and cheeks bulge as he plays, his lips pressed around the reeds. The brown suits of the other three men nearly blend into the wall behind them, and they all have chin-length gray hair, presumably wigs. The man to our far left glares down at a book with his dark brows arched up and away from his nose, and his lopsided mouth open wide. The man next to him leans in to look at the book in front of the pianist, and the third singer, to the far right, lifts one hand as he opens his mouth wide, his brows gathered, and his wig pushed back on his head.
Philip Mercier, The Singing Party, c. 1732/1760, oil on canvas, Gift of Duncan Phillips, 1952.4.2

The Singing Party

Philip Mercier · c. 1732/1760 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1952.4.2

Emilian 16th Century, Fantastic Landscape with Figures, late 16th century, oil on canvas, Gift of Duncan Phillips, 1952.4.1

Fantastic Landscape with Figures

Emilian 16th Century · late 16th century · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1952.4.1

Augustus Vincent Tack, Harlan F. Stone, 1944, oil on canvas, Gift of Duncan Phillips, 1944.4.1

Harlan F. Stone

Augustus Vincent Tack · 1944 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1944.4.1

John Marin, Flint Isle, Maine—No.1, 1947, watercolor over graphite on wove paper, Corcoran Collection (Gift of the Women's Committee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art), 2014.136.200

Flint Isle, Maine—No.1

John Marin · 1947 · watercolor over graphite on wove paper ·  Accession ID  2014.136.200

Bibliography

1979

  • Forgey, Benjamin. "A Critical Decade in the History of a Great Collection." Smithsonian 10 (May 1979): 68-72.

1980

  • Phillips, Marjorie. Duncan Phillips and His Collection. 2nd rev. ed. New York, [1970] 1980.

1986

  • Sutton, Denys. "Duncan Phillips: An American Aesthete." Apollo 124 (August 1986): 78-87.