By Jann Haynes Gilmore, PhD, AWA Board Member

When Duncan and Marjorie Phillips were collecting the works of French Nabis artist, Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), he visited the couple in their Washington, DC, home/gallery in 1926. Later in his correspondence with Duncan, Bonnard wrote: “I keep happy memories of my visit to your gallery and often think of the enjoyable painting of your charming wife [Marjorie Phillips], who, it seems to me, should continue to cultivate her gift.” ¹

Photograph of Marjorie Phillips, n.d., Women of Influence (Part II), Reading Room, October 24, 2017-July 7, 2019, The Phillips Collection, phillipscollection.org.

Marjorie is often referred to as “the woman behind” the first American modernist art collection  known today as The Phillips Collection, founded in 1921. Duncan Phillips was a Pittsburgh banking and steel manufacturing heir and the museum began in the couple’s home located in the fashionable neighborhood of Dupont Circle in Washington.  Many worldwide museum goers, when asked their favorite DC art museum, respond that it is The Phillips Collection because of its intimate setting filled with dazzling modern American and European art.

From privileged backgrounds, Marjorie and Duncan met in New York at the Century Club where he was a member.  She lived in Ossining NY and commuted into the city to study at the Art Students League with Kenneth Hayes Miller and Broadman Robinson.  He graduated from Yale and had spent considerable time in New York with his brother, buying art through an annual family stipend of $10,000.  Duncan was already researching art, writing critical essays and becoming familiar with galleries in the city. Marjorie’s grandparents owned a Hudson River manor in Newburgh, NY where she was first introduced to a big art studio where her uncles, American artists Clifford and Reynolds Beal, encouraged her as a young child.  Gifford was head of the Art Students League when Majorie was a student and he was also a member of the Century Club where Marjorie met Duncan at an exhibition opening in 1921.  She later wrote that the attraction was immediate and that they both sensed in each other a passion for the way in which art should be conveyed.

The couple married that year and moved to his boyhood home near Washington’s Dupont Circle.  The brick mansion was occupied by his widowed mother; his father had died by then and his beloved brother had died of the Spanish flu.  Early in its history The Phillips Collection was said to be born of grief for the loss of father and brother.  Indeed, the Phillips Memorial Collection was a memorial begun with the small art collection that Duncan Phillips had purchased in New York.

From the beginning, The Phillips Collection, now named, was a different kind of museum.  It offered a cozy homelike atmosphere in which to view art unlike the marbled halls of most museums at that time.  Richard Diebenkorn, an icon in 20^th century art, remembered the relaxed feeling he had visiting the museum as a serviceman stationed nearby in 1944: “I just absorbed everything on those walls . . . . I absorbed something else, and that was incredible generosity that was there to take home.” ²  The museum also had a  unique, less formal mission that its co-directors set forth: their emerging  collection would not be organized in a linear or chronological fashion but arranged within ‘experimental stations’ where the viewer could absorb and form his own opinions about the artwork.  There were few interpretive labels so that the viewer would be forced to form his own conclusions. ³

Marjorie Phillips, Portrait of Duncan Phillips with Dogs-C’est Tout, Ami, and Babette, 1975, The Phillips Collection, www.phillipscollection.org.

The Phillips Collection, 1621st St, NW, Washington, DC, www.pinerest.com.

The collection grew out of Duncan’s love for Impressionism, but soon the couple was focusing on modernism as it was beginning to appear in American and European art centers. They purchased works by Bonnard, Renoir, Matisse, Braque (preferred over Picasso’s Cubist works), Daumier, Klee, Vuillard, O’Keeffe and later Rothko among more artists’ works that eventually numbered in the thousands. The couple daringly introduced historic paintings as links to modernism in their setups including Goya’s The Repentant St. Peter and El Greco’s canvas of the same subject, using them as expressionistic links to modern artists like Albert Pinkham Ryder.   Duncan stated the museum’s mandate from the beginning: “The Phillips Collection is based on a definite policy of supporting many methods of seeing and painting.” ⁴

The Phillips Collection was the first modern art museum in the country, predating MOMA by 8 years, and later, the Whitney Museum of American Art by 9. The couple took many trips to New York and to Europe to garner the best works for their collection.  Concerned that the viewing public was not as large as he had hoped, on a 1923 trip to Paris, the couple decided to purchase Renoir’s famous Luncheon of the Boating Party from the dealer Durand-Ruel for $125,000.  The famous dealer feared France’s possible outcry that the artwork was leaving the country.  Today that artwork is the most sought out in the collection. The couple established relationships, often friendships, with most of the leaders of American modern art movements including other museums and artists as well as the dealers and experts including Stieglitz, Barnes, Halpert, and Force, among others.  This reciprocity paid off through the years as simpatico grew among their art world contacts, including the media.   Of note is gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz who sold them many works from his stable of modern artists including Arthur Dove, John Marin and Georgia O’Keeffe.  Stieglitz often wrote fondly to the Phillipses; after the three of them had attended Marjorie’s solo exhibition at Bignou Gallery in New York, Stieglitz described her work in a letter  as “alive very vividly before me” and added: “Seeing you and your wife standing amongst her pictures, . . . made me feel as if I had visited and seen an exceptionally fine world.” ⁵

The Phillips Collection’s mission was scripted in a unique way that is relevant today. Duncan Phillips believed in art conversations among visitors and paintings. He advocated the vehicle of the “eyes of the mind” through which a painting’s meaning could be understood. This theory was similar to the mission of John Dewey (1859-1952), famous philosopher/educator, who was espousing the same methods in education. ⁶

Dunmarlin [destroyed in 1988], “Inside Homes: Great Estates,” Washington Life Magazine, January 20, 2012, Bing.com.

Marjorie Phillips, Autumn Afternoon, 1948, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Whitney.org.

Marjorie Phillips, Train on a High Hill, 1946, The Phillips Collection, WikiArt.org.

Phillips frequently re-installed the artworks, grouping American and European works in the same space allowing contrasts, links, and analogies for the viewer.  He would juxtapose one of his favorite early artists, Giorgione, with the modernist Rothko or the earlier Ryder in order to challenge the viewer to look inward at the artists’ work. There was no fixed truth. Imagination became key and was the exact opposite of the formal approach to art that traditionally includes line, shape, color and texture.  As The Phillips Collection grew, many artworks were arranged in units or in groups by favored artists like Dove and much later, Rothko, where a small room was devoted solely to Rothko’s works in the collection. These units were referred to as “experiment stations” where the paintings were hung in a separate space.  Eventually the Phillips Collection included some 47 Doves, 17 Bonnards, 13 Braques, 8 O’Keeffes, and 7 Rothkos, the last artist whom the couple collected together.

As with other leaders of the art world, the couple became good friends with many of their artists including Dove, Marin, O’Keeffe, Jacob Lawrence (they acquired half of his Migration Series in 1942) and Rothko. Duncan had an especially close relationship with Arthur Dove as evinced in their correspondence.  He supplied Dove, painting on his farm, a living stipend of $50 monthly as he did to support John Marin. Dove’s Red Sun was purchased through Stieglitz in 1935 and became Duncan’s favorite work at that time describing it as evolving from nature’s tension and movement resulting in a spiritual experience, one born out of Dove’s love for the landscape and sky. ⁷ Their correspondence was prolific but they met only once in New York.   Marin would often visit The Phillips Collection and their private residence when he was in DC visiting relatives.  He wrote of the memorable “talks, lookings, and goings” during his occasions with the Phillipses. ⁸

As the couple built their collection, they attained a distinguished reputation as hosts and leaders in the Washington community.  By 1929, they had outgrown their living quarters in the original home/museum which has had numerous additions, and built a 17,000 sq ft, twenty room house on 16 acres in the tony Foxhall residential neighborhood in DC.  They named their residence Dunmarlin. The couple had two children by that the time. The mansion accommodated salons, concerts, dinners with government and embassy officials and visiting dignitaries.  The dining table sat thirty guests. At these occasions, the couple sometimes brought home their latest art purchases so that their guests could examine them more closely and prompt discussions. Dunmarlin remained in the family until it was sadly demolished by a developer in 1988.  The Phillipses also maintained a summer residence in the Allegheny mountains of Pennsylvania, near Altoona, in the village of Ebensburg, a resort for Pittsburgh’s elite.

Duncan Phillips, as head of the Phillips Collection for over forty years, promoted the Arts in many pivotal ways as well as in elevated capacities due, of course, to his stature in the cultural world.  During the Depression he headed the New Deal’s WPA regional committee for the arts in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia and when the National Gallery of Art opened in 1941 on the nation’s Mall, he was elected a Trustee.  Phillips saw no competition between his quiet museum across town and the National Gallery, often negotiating gifts for the nation’s museum.  He also served on the board of the Museum of Modern Art in New York alongside his friend, Director Alfred Barr, Jr.  After WW II Phillips was among a group of several distinguished art experts who selected American art to be exhibited in post-war London.

Describing Majorie as his “gifted wife” and “constant associate and mentor”, the couple acted as one and Marjorie, although a practicing, time-consuming artist, held equal power in running the museum. She is always credited as a “co-founder” and for shifting the original intent of the museum from a memorial to a modern art museum.  She served formally as Assistant Director until 1966 at her husband’s death and then served as Director until 1972 when the couple’s son, Laughlin Phillips, succeeded her.   A “patient” and “methodical” force in decision-making for a half century, she was characterized as shy but possessing necessary backbone when needed, observed her devoted staff. When she spearheaded the 1971 50^th Anniversary of The Phillips Collection’s founding by mounting a highly-regarded Cezanne show, she was able to acquire loans from the Louvre which did not often share its works.  And, she held off the National Gallery Director, J. Carter Brown, when he suggested that his more formidable museum share the Cezanne exhibition with the Phillips. This seminal show traveled to Chicago and Boston. Phillips considered it her greatest triumph as Museum Director. Late in her tenure, she wrote the important book, Duncan Phillips and His Collection, published in 1982, that recorded both history and insights into the couple’s joint collecting experience.  Yes, one could ask why she left out her own credit in the title? Certainly it was a sign of the time. ⁹

Marjorie Phillips, Orchid with Palette, 1950, The Phillips Collection,
phillipscollection.org.

Marjorie Phillips, Night Baseball, 1951, The Phillips Collection, phillipscollection.org.

Jann Haynes Gilmore, Sketch of Pierre Bonnard, ink and watercolor wash, Sketchbook, 2020.

SO, WHO WAS THIS ENVIABLE WIFE? Marjorie Phillips was Assistant Director of the museum for 41 years, overseer of two enormous residences, secretary for their many social and entertainment commitments, secretary for their personal correspondences, and a national leader for civic causes including support for war efforts. BUT, above almost all else, she was an artist. It would have been popular to call Marjorie Phillips a “dabbler” artist as simply the wife of a collector, but she was much more than that.   Duncan proudly supported her art career, writing: “Marjorie Phillips has the unmistakable style of a born artist” and he compared her work to “Morisot in line and Derain and Bonnard [her favorite artist] in color.”  ¹⁰

Her art reflected her artist statement: “I decided to paint the celebration of the wonder of the world. I didn’t want to paint depressing pictures . . . my paintings are all on the cheerful side—I felt it was needed.” ¹¹

She posted on her studio door inside the Dunmarlin mansion, “Do Not Disturb” and painted almost every morning until Duncan came home for a late lunch and she returned with him to the museum and her duties there.  She painted portraits, landscapes in the studio and en plein air, and many floral still-lifes. Her husband would often accompany her on outdoor painting excursions. She could hardly believe it when an interviewer in her late life asked her if she painted from artificial flowers? Her work received acclaim in many parts of the art world including solo shows at the Durlacher and other galleries in New York and a late career exhibition in 1973 at the Marlborough Gallery in London. US embassies also sent her artwork around the world to showcase American artists. And, certainly the friendships and encouragement of major 20^th century artists fueled her oeuvre. Her most treasured painting in The Phillips Collection, which holds over 400 of her works, is Night Baseball, a depiction of a baseball game between the Washington Senators and New York Yankees in the summer of 1951.  As a prominent civic-minded couple, the two were great baseball fans and while attending games, Majorie would sketch or paint the action of America’s pastime.  One canvas depicts the great Joe DiMaggio at bat expecting to hit a homerun.

As a practicing artist, she also encouraged Duncan to support emerging artists and women artists, in general.  Marjorie sat beside Olive Rush, a Santa Fe painter, at a Duncan Phillips lecture in DC in 1933 and whispered to Rush that her husband “considers her work among the best.” He bought a work by her that year and another watercolor two years later.  Rush assessed the importance of these purchases to her national stature in a letter to a fellow artist: “I am so pleased as he is a distinguished buyer of moderns—a bigger fact is honor than the financial.” ¹²

Arthur Dove, Red Sun, 1935, The Phillips Collection, phillipscollection.org.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Ranchos de Taos, No. ll, 1929, The Phillips Collection, phillipscollection.org.

Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series, Panel no. 35, “They arrived in the North in great numbers”, 1940/41, The Phillips Collection, phillipscollection.org.

Photograph, Marjorie and Duncan Phillips sitting in museum, The Phillips Collection, Carter-Birken, Duncan and Marjorie Phillips and America’s First Museum of Modern Art, p. xxiii.

Sam Gilliam, a fellow DC artist of the Washington Color School, described “Mrs. Phillips” as “the embodiment of The Phillips Collection” observing that Mrs. Phillips was “attuned to life of a painter”; . . . “her purpose was to have us collected.” She gave Gilliam a solo show during her directorship and insisted that he install it himself and did not require him to show all new work. ¹³

In a late interview for the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, Marjorie Phillips recalled her life and the symbiotic passions she and her husband shared in addition to their support of each other’s individual pursuits. While Duncan talked and wrote about art, she painted.  In her 1985 New York Times obituary, she was quoted from an earlier interview when asked the date that she had last painted.  Her answer was on January 13, 1982, when she painted a still-life of orchids after she learned that an airliner had crashed into the Potomac killing 74 people, and added: “I just had to paint.” ¹⁴

 The inimitable art critic, Hilton Kramer, perhaps best summed up the Phillipses legacy in the New York Times after Duncan’s death in 1966, but included no mention of cofounder Marjorie: “Phillip lived by a code of independence, demanding it in himself and encouraging it in others.  His methods were the reverse of popularization. It was the individual rather than the crowd to whom he addressed his endeavors.” Continuing, Kramer did include Marjorie, “as they both were always striving to improve the quality of life for fellow human beings through relationships with art. ¹⁵

Endnotes:

1. Exhibition Label, Bonnard’s Worlds, The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, March 2 to June 2, 2024.
2. Pamela Carter-Birken, Duncan and Marjorie Phillips and America’s First Museum of Modern Art, Vernon Press, 2021, p. 136.  This author has relied heavily on Dr. Carter-Birken’s book for the most thorough research on both Marjorie and Duncan Phillips.  It regrettably provides little insight into their personal lives nor how they interacted intimately as a couple. A more personal account of Marjorie Phillips, particularly as an artist, is found in Oral History Interview, Marjorie Phillips, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Paul Cummings, June 27, 1974.
3. Eve M. Kahn, “The Museum that Introduced America to Modern Art,” Apollo: The International Art Magazine, November 19, 2021, apollo.magazine.com.
4.  Ibid.
5. Carter-Birken, p. 44.
6. Ibid., xxv, 26.
7. Ibid., 74.
8. Ibid., 101.
9. Marjorie Phillips, Duncan Phillips and His Collection, New York: WW Norton & Co., 1982.
10. Marjorie Phillips: Art in Embassies, US Department of State, art.state.gov.
11. Ibid.
12. Jann Haynes Gilmore, Olive Rush: Finding Her Place in the Santa Fe Art Colony, Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2016, pgs. 114, 127.
13. Carter-Birken, pgs. 135-136.
14. Marjorie Acker Phillips Dies; Co-founder of Art Collection, Glenn Fowles The New York Times, Obituary, June 21, 1985.d
15. Carter-Birken, p. 131. [This piece by Hilton Kramer had been published in The New York Times at Duncan Phillips death in 1966]