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
The Boating Party bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum, but some works were left to the Havemeyer children and have since ended up elsewhere. Art historian and museum administrator Frederick A. Sweet calls it "One of the most ambitious paintings she ever attempted". His 1966 analysis focusses on the balance of the "powerful dark silhouette of the boatman", the angle between the oar and the arm that "thrusts powerfully into the centre of the composition towards the mother and child" and "delicate, feminine ones". Cassatt placed the horizon at the top of the frame in Japanese fashion. colorplate 75 35 7/16x46 1/8 in. (90