The Phillips Collection by European masters such as Gustave Courbet, Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Jacques Villon, Paul Cézanne, Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Klee, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, and Pablo Picasso. In 1923, Phillips purchased Pierre-Auguste Renoir's impressionist painting, "Luncheon of the Boating Party" (1880–81), the museum’s best-known work. From the 1920s to the 1960s, Phillips re-arranged his galleries in installations that were non-chronological and non-traditional, reflecting the relationships he saw between various artistic expressions. He presented visual connections—between past and present, between classical form and romantic expression—as dialogues on the walls of the museum. Giving equal focus to American
Luncheon in the Studio saying to us: Look at me!... Thus, no expression, no feeling, no composition." He spoke of "types without character, scenes devoid of all interest" and said disparagingly (yet insightfully from the point of view of modern criticism) that "Manet had made the portrait of a "Balcony" and a "Luncheon"". Meyers finds the depiction of Leenhoff similar in some respects to an 1855 portrait by Edgar Degas of his brother, "Achille De Gas in the Uniform of a Cadet". They share the leaning pose, the presence of swords, and facial characteristics. He further suggests that, by borrowing from the Degas work,