Stuart Davis, Blue Cafe and Corner Cafe

I had the feeling that this was the best place in the world for an artist to live and work ... The prevalence of the sidewalk cafe was an important factor. It gave easy access to one's friends and gave extra pleasure to long walks through various parts of the city ... There was a seeming timelessness about the place that was conducive to the kind of contemplation essential to art.

Stuart Davis, Autobiography


Everyone heard about the Washington National Gallery of Art. Few know about the Phillips Collection. It's a much smaller gallery, close to DuPont Circle. Each artist is represented by few works, each one is a masterpiece. Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, Stuart Davis, Oskar Kokoschka ... A Picasso from the blue period (The Blue Room), a splendid Pattern of Leaves by Georgia O'Keeffe, a Hopper (an image near Penn Station in New York), a Sloan (the Staten Island ferryboat), an amazing Rothko room, then Renoir, Cezanne, Degas ... A Repentant St. Peter by El Greco, in another room a Repentant St. Peter by Goya ... An exhibition just started, Klee in America, with works gathered from other American museums and collections.

DuPont Circle - with the coffee house, with the Kramer Books, with the Phillips Collection - with the entire bohemian atmosphere around the huge fountain and then on the Connecticut Avenue - you feel a kind of Parisian esprit there.


(Phillips Collection)