Renoir, Home at Last

Passing through Washington last month, we had the great good fortune to stumble on the ‘Renoir Returns’ exhibit at the Phillips Collection on 21^st St. (NW). Lucky: over a career of tourist rubbernecking, we had seen our share of Renoirs. We had even read “Renoir, My Father,” Jean Renoir’s curiously touching memoir of his father, Claude.

But the Phillips show (which runs through July 30) was something different. Phillips was a great collector of impressionists. Renoir’s “Boating Party” is the centerpiece of his collection. But the Boating Party and indeed, much else from the collection, has been on the road these past few years. Now it was/is time for a homecoming.

The curatorial staff took it all as an occasion for more than just a casual self-celebration. No: they’ve put together a splendid retrospective of Impressionism as a whole—necessarily incomplete, but framed and presented with great care. As an added benefaction, they’ve thrown in some instructive insights on how Phillips did his collecting and, indeed, on collecting in general. Certainly worth a visit or a side trip; maybe even worth a journey.