Influence on Artists

Influence on Artists

Artists have often found an oasis and source of inspiration in their visits to The Phillips Collection. While stationed in the Washington area as a Marine during World War II, the California artist Richard Diebenkorn came frequently to the museum, where he was drawn to works by Vuillard and Matisse. He later noted that "no painting had greater impact" on him than Matisse's Studio, Quai St. Michel, which finds echoes in his own Girl with Plant, now also in the collection.

In the 1960s, local artists sometimes referred to as the Washington Color School were fascinated by the museum's holdings of such colorists as Renoir, Bonnard, Matisse, Klee, and Cézanne—as well as one of Duncan Phillips's great favorites, the American painter Augustus Vincent Tack. "It was my very first exposure to modern painting...a total revelation," artist Gene Davis later wrote. "Many of the lessons learned there undeniably were translated into later paintings." The Phillips, in turn, later acquired works by a number of these painters, including Davis himself, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Howard Mehring.

Over time, many artists whose works are represented in the collection have visited the Phillips and engaged in its programs, including Jacob Lawrence, Sean Scully, Elizabeth Murray, and Howard Hodgkin. Today, The Phillips Collection Center for the Study of Modern Art, established in 2006, encourages a dialogue with current artists through its Conversations with Artists series and other public programs.

Henri Matisse, Studio, Quai St. Michel, 1916. © 2008 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Richard Diebenkorn, Girl with Plant, 1960. © 2008 The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn.

©2012 The Phillips Collection.

1600 21st Street, NW | Washington, DC 20009 | 202-387-2151