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American impressionism: paintings from the Phillips Collection
Arts & Activities, April, 2008 by Mark M. Johnson
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Since the late 19th century, Americans have had a fascination with Impressionism, a French-born style of painting depicting landscapes and scenes of everyday life revealed through natural light and virtuoso brushwork. The Phillips Collection, America's first Museum of Modern Art, which began in the Washington, D.C. home of Duncan Phillips in 1921, helped raise awareness and appreciation for contemporary artists and their works with its broad representation of Impressionist paintings, both French and American.
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Highlighting the "golden age" of American Impressionism, The Phillips Collection has organized its more than 50 American Impressionist paintings into a traveling exhibition for the first time in nearly 25 years. The exhibition, American Impressionism: Paintings from The Phillips Collection, opened in Washington, D.C. in 2007 and will travel in 2008 and 2009 to museums in Memphis, Tenn.; Rochester, N.Y.; Montgomery, Ala.; Oklahoma City; and Santa Fe, N.M.
The exhibition and its excellent accompanying catalogue, American Impressionists: Painters of Light and the Modern Landscape, feature paintings by such acclaimed American artists as: William Merritt Chase, William Glackens, Lilian Westcott Hale, Childe Hassam, Ernest Lawson, Maurice Prendergast, Theodore Robinson, Helen M. Turner, John Henry Twachtman, and Julian Alden Weir, among others.
Impressionism began as an art movement in the 1860s in Paris by a group of artists that included such household names as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Their work broke the rules of standard academic painting by using short, thick brushstrokes to capture the essential form of a subject as revealed by light, rather than its details. The Impressionists also took their practice outdoors. Previously, still lifes, portraits and even landscapes were painted indoors, and often adapted from earlier drawings and preliminary studies. Impressionists, in contrast, attempted to capture actual effects of sunlight by painting en plein air, or out-of-doors.
After the end of the Civil War in 1865, American art patrons, many of whom had made fortunes from the war, traveled abroad and embraced European culture. To announce their wealth and sophistication, they built grand houses, showcasing imported paintings by old masters as well as contemporaries. In order to appeal to these prospective patrons, aspiring American artists studied in Europe, especially Paris, where Impressionism was quickly gaining notoriety.
Soon after, American artists began developing a style of Impressionism that was similar to their French counterparts; however, rather than replicating the French style, their work developed into an American interpretation. They, too, painted en plein air, sought to convey the qualifies of sunlight and often painted landscapes and scenes of leisure, but American Impressionists retained more structure and realism in their work, some even tapping into urban life and the cultural energy that was increasingly concentrated in Northern cities. The result was not only a new American painting style, but also a flesh interpretation of America's landscape and cities.
Duncan Phillips (1886-1966), the grandson of a banker and cofounder of a steel company, was among the earliest collectors of American Impressionist paintings. He found the French style too emotionally cool and scientific for his taste.
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The poetic quality of American Impressionism, however, appealed to his passion for a more modern style of landscape painting. Although American Impressionism was already a mainstream style by the 1910s, Duncan Phillips began collecting at that time and acquired a comprehensive painting collection in a relatively short period of time--just 10 years.
Over the course of that decade Phillips was transformed from a collector and critic to a museum director. In 1921 he opened the Phillips Memorial Gallery in his 1897 Georgian Revival home, and presented 87 American Impressionist paintings in the gallery's inaugural first season. 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."
With the start of World War I, the Great Depression and World War II, Impressionism lost its cutting edge as contemporary art became regarded as more in-touch with a chaotic world, and took precedence. In the 1950s, however, Impressionism experienced a resurgence that continues today. Duncan Phillips and his family continued to collect and to lead the museum into the 1990s, and built the museum's collections into one of the finest modern collections in the world.
American Impressionism: Paintings from The Phillips Collection is organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. The exhibition and national tour are supported by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of the American Masterpieces Program. Additional support for the exhibition is provided by the Phillips Contemporaries.
