March 5, 2022
Following up on our visit to The Kreeger Museum, we decided to visit another of Washington’s prime private galleries, The Phillips Collection. The Phillips opened in 1921 and was America’s first museum devoted to modern art. It started life housed in the Georgian Revival home of its founder, Duncan Phillips, but has since that time expanded into two adjoining buildings.
The permanent collection includes nearly 3,000 works by American and European impressionist and modern artists. Many of the old favorites were there. Here’s a sampling:
There is a room devoted entirely to the works of Mark Rothko. It is an intimate room and a quiet spot to sit and ponder. The paintings appear to glow. Unfortunately, the photos fail to accurately show the depth and vibrancy of the colors.
Perhaps the museums’s most famous piece is Pierre-August Renoir’s iconic impressionist painting, Luncheon of the Boating Party.
The museum also has a large music room where they hold performances. We once saw a GoGo concert there. They had rolled a harpsichord into the space for a Vivaldi concert to take place the next evening. The ornate room definitely appeared more suited to Vivaldi than Go Go.
But what we had really come to see was an exhibition of Pablo Picasso’s blue period paintings in the adjoining building.
Some people have argued that Picasso is not the greatest modern artist of all time. But they, with all due respect, are wrong. He simply sits head and shoulders above all of the rest. Focusing on the years 1900-04, the exhibition was breathtaking. It’s just unfathomable that at the time he was creating these paintings he was just 19-23 years old. If these paintings were all he ever created, he would still rank among the greats, but he was just starting. Anyway, here are just a few of the paintings from the exhibition. It started off with some of his earliest works, where he showed that he could already knock off a portrait and still life as well as anyone.
Then the exhibition moved onto the blue period paintings.
Finally, it ended up with some paintings from his early Rose Period.
Leaving the gallery, we made our way over to nearby Connecticut Avenue for an early dinner at Bistro du Coin, where we could pretend we were eating at one of the establishments in Paris that Picasso used to haunt. Along the way, we saw some spectacular clouds over the buildings lining the avenue.
Mal and Lauren 