Art April 1987
The pictures and passions of Leland Bell
On the Leland Bell show.
The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. is home to some of the most beautiful nineteenth- and twentieth-century French paintings in America. From Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party through Matisse’s Studio, Quai St. Michel to the room full of Bonnards, it’s a place where the great transformations of French art—by which ordinary subjects are carried up to lyric heights —take place again and again. At the Phillips you can’t help feeling wonderful about French art—the collection has an amazing coherence—and the curatorial staff likes to mount temporary shows that expand on the collection’s essential themes. The Phillips organized the memorable “Braque: The Late Paintings” in 1982, and hosted the American side of the Bonnard retrospective of 1984. When the gallery exhibits living artists, an attempt is...
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