Emerging Infectious Disease ISSN: 1080-6059

Influenza and the Origins of The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

David M. Morens*

and Jeffery K. Taubenberger†

Author affiliations: *National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA; †Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington, DC, USA

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Figure 1

Dead Bird, by the influential 19th-century American artist Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847–1917), was first seen by Duncan Phillips no later than 1916 but was not purchased for the collection until it became available a decade later. The major scholarly catalog of The Phillips Collection, The Eye of Duncan Phillips: a Collection in the Making (1), calls Dead Bird "one of Ryder's most powerful images," noting that it "explores a recurrent illusory theme: the coexistence of the corporeal and the ethere

Figure 1. Dead Bird, by the influential 19th-century American artist Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847–1917), was first seen by Duncan Phillips no later than 1916 but was not purchased for the collection until it became available a decade later. The major scholarly catalog of The Phillips Collection, The Eye of Duncan Phillips: a Collection in the Making (1), calls Dead Bird "one of Ryder's most powerful images," noting that it "explores a recurrent illusory theme: the coexistence of the corporeal and the ethereal," and that "[s]uch starkly realistic details as the rigidly curled claws, rendered in heavy impasto, and the subtle textured contrasts of plumage and beak, create a moving evocation of suffering and death." - The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Reproduced with permission.

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