Enchantment

All Stars Exhibition Guide

Artists can discover beauty in the least likely of places. They can turn the mundane into the extraordinary, showing us that even the most inconsequential things can be alluring and wonderfully inspiring to behold. What can be found in the shadows, in grief, in everyday life? The underside of a bridge at twilight inspires wonder and awe. Rippling waters streaked with sunlight capture fleeting natural phenomena. A vase of weeping roses reminds us of life’s precious moments. For Duncan Phillips, “Pictures send us back to life… with the ability to see beauty all about us as we go on our accustomed ways.” (1926)

A wooden dock stretches from the left, where there are small orange and yellow structures, grass, and a tree, to the right, where a woman in black approaches the edge of the canvas. Beyond her is blue water dotted with people and white-sailed boats. The sky overhead is various shades of light blue.

William Glackens
American, 1870–1938
Bathers at Bellport
About 1912
Oil paint on canvas
The Phillips Collection
Acquired 1929
© Estate of William Glackens

William Glackens spent the summers between 1911 and 1916 at Bellport, Long Island, a community that attracted artists, writers, and musicians. There Glackens painted a series of beach scenes—vibrant canvases that depart from earlier, more somber works, and his commercial illustrations for magazines. Although he honed his journalistic eye for detail on assignments such as covering the Spanish-American War in Cuba in 1898, by this time his interest in color, light, and flatness of the picture plane led him to focus on his family and friends enjoying the sun, the beach, and sailing.

A large, triangular swath of blue stretches across the bottom 3/4 of the canvas. It is rippled with darker blue, and striped with white rays that seem to radiate from the light blue sky overhead. To the left are mountains, and to the right are trees which seem to bend in the wind.

Harold Weston
American, 1894–1972
Winds, Upper Ausable Lake
1922
Oil paint on canvas
The Phillips Collection
Gift of Mrs. Harold Weston, 1981
© Estate of Harold Weston

Although Harold Weston’s style changed throughout his career, he continually tried to capture the emotional essence of experience. A sympathetic response to his subject took precedence over depicting reality. Weston painted Winds, Upper Ausable Lake while living in the remote mountain hamlet of Saint Huberts in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. The painting’s exaggerated rhythms and simplified imagery reveal his reverence for nature.

Two rocky mountains to the left and right create a valley where they meet in the center of the composition. Clouds at the top of the landscape cast shadows on the still gray water below.

Rockwell Kent
American, 1882–1971
Azopardo River
1922
Oil paint on canvas
The Phillips Collection
Acquired 1925
© Rockwell Kent. Rights courtesy of Plattsburgh State Art Museum, State University of New York, USA, Rockwell Kent Collection, Bequest of Sally Kent Gorton. All rights reserved.

Rockwell Kent found inspiration in harsh and remote locations across the globe. He painted Azopardo River in Chile, reducing nature to simplified shapes, contours, and colors. When asked why he traveled such distances to paint, Kent said, “To such the wisdom of St. Augustine replies: ‘And the people went there and admired the high mountains, the wide wastes of the sea and the mighty downward rushing streams, and the ocean, and the course of the stars, and forgot themselves.’”

Painted in various blues and greens, a bridge juts out from a hill in the center of the composition towards the right, over water which reflects the blue sky. In the foreground are spindly, leafless trees.

Ernest Lawson
American, born in Canada, 1873–1939
Spring Night, Harlem River
1913
Oil paint on canvas mounted on panel
The Phillips Collection
Acquired 1920

Ernest Lawson often painted outdoors, favoring wooded valleys and urban environments that featured bridges. In this painting, Lawson depicted Washington Bridge—a modern steel arch bridge (opened 1888) connecting upper Manhattan to the Bronx—as observed from below and against the night sky, heightening the drama and visual impact of the huge steel span. As Duncan Phillips expressed, “[This work] is Shakespearean with its home lights and bridge lamps glimmering in a tremulous turquoise air as in some garden romance.” (1926)

All Stars: American Artists from The Phillips Collection is organized by The Phillips Collection in collaboration with the Denver Art Museum.

Support is provided by the Tom Taplin Jr. and Ted Taplin Endowment, the Birnbaum Social Discourse Project, Ellen and Morris Susman, Lisë Gander and Andy Main, Mike Leprino Family Foundation, the Kristin and Charles Lohmiller Exhibitions Fund, the donors to the Annual Fund Leadership Campaign, and the residents who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Promotional support is provided by 5280 Magazine and CBS Colorado.