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Duncan Phillips may have first seen Tomlin's work in 1932 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and became familiar with it through exhibitions at the Rehn Gallery and at the annual Whitney and Carnegie exhibitions during the 1930s and early 1940s. Attracted to its "rich...tonal subtleties," Phillips purchased Still Life, his first Tomlin, in 1944. This work possesses the characteristics of still life that Phillips valued early in his collecting career: "not [as]...mere imitation of objects but [as]...a vehicle for personal expression" in which decorative elements unobtrusively serve as the means to achieve this goal. Phillips noted that in Tomlin's "preference for Braque over Soutine...he was ever the musician striving to bring order out of complexity or to elaborate a simple melody with subtle variations."
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