On Feb. 20, the Cleveland Museum of Art launched “Masterworks from the Phillips Collection,” an exhibit of popular European paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries. The exhibit includes famous works by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, among others, and combines about 50 pieces from the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. with 18 pieces from the CMA.

The exhibit traces the development of modern art from its precursors; painters like John Constable and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot who broke away from classical traditions in the early 19th century through impressionism and post-impressionism. The exhibit closes with works from modernist masters Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky.

The exhibit centers around the Phillips Collection’s most famous acquisition — Auguste Renoir’s “The Luncheon of the Boating Party.” This painting is prominently displayed on its own wall.

Pairings of Phillips Collection pieces and CMA pieces occur throughout the exhibit, giving CMA a chance to show off its own grand collection of European paintings. The exhibit opens with two versions of Van Gogh’s “The Road Menders.” One version comes from the Phillips Collection and the other belongs to the CMA. In the CMA’s earlier version, spectators can see the red diamonds on the cheap fabric the piece was painted on before it was copied onto canvas.

Curator Tom Hinson said that when he started working on the Phillips exhibit, he immediately made correlations. “It’s a wonderful way to compare how two great institutions collected works from the same artists and from roughly the same periods of time. Other museums don’t have the kinds of collections that would allow them to make such comparisons.”

The show is not only a tutorial on the evolution of modern art, but also a mini-biography of collector Duncan Phillips. Early in his life, Phillips found modern artists like Matisse disgusting, but he eventually came to appreciate modern art and collected it voraciously. When Phillips opened two rooms of his Washington, D.C. home to the public in 1921 (by the ’30s, the entire house was public), his collection became the first museum in history dedicated to modern art.

The exhibit’s chronological approach to presentation follows a core part of Phillips’s philosophy, according to Hinson. “Phillips believed in looking at older art as a means of influencing younger, living artists,” said Hinson. “Duncan saw a continuation, an ongoing evolution in art, not stark breaks that many historians see.”

Phillips also believed in the individual’s personal response to art. Phillips himself was profoundly moved by art; art spoke to him. He wanted to give others the opportunity to experience art the way he did: in the comfortable, intimate setting of a home. “He could have created from scratch a large, marble architectural vault for this work,” said Hinson. “But instead he chose to exhibit it in his home.”

In an effort to uphold Phillips’s vision, Hinson worked hard to make CMA’s special exhibition gallery feel like a domestic space. “We divided the space into small rooms, added chair rails and crown mouldings and used paint in a way that made the galleries seem shorter, more like spaces one would encounter in a home,” said Hinson.

“Masterworks” may bore serious art buffs because it includes so many hugely famous works of art. After all, the impressionists are the most popular movement in art history and just about everyone is familiar with van Gogh, Degas and Renoir. CMA undoubtedly chose to open the exhibit with van Gogh because his work always draws crowds. Some of the power of famous masterpieces such as “Luncheon of the Boating Party” (and the “Mona Lisa,” as another example) has been lost because modern technology allows us to make so many photo reproductions of these images.

But the wise museum-goer will not let Degas’s dancers and “Luncheon” make them forget about the smaller, less famous paintings hiding in corners — the real treasures of this exhibit. It is easy to get lost in Odilon Redon’s dream-like pastel, “Orpheus,” or in the woman’s detailed and expressive face in Degas’s “Melancholy.” Other eye-opening pieces are Honoré Daumier’s “The Strong Man,” and female impressionist Berthe Morisot’s “Two Girls.” Many of the masterpieces in this exhibit belong to CMA, the world-renowned resource just forty minutes away.

“Masterworks from the Phillips Collection” will continue at the Cleveland Art Museum until May 29. Admission is $9 for College students and includes an audio tour.