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The greatest difference in the brothers' collecting lay in their attitudes toward modern art. Sterling stated, "I don't care what Cézanne, Matisse, and Gauguin thought or what they wanted to express… the rules of painting cannot be broken." In contrast, Stephen found Matisse to be "a great and original artist—one of the very few who can survive a long and intimate acquaintance." Indeed, Stephen's Post-Impressionist and twentieth-century paintings, by such artists as Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Matisse, came to define his collection, and they placed him at the forefront of the modern art world where, among other roles, he served as a founding trustee of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Although he later changed his opinion of Matisse, selling all of the eighteen paintings he once owned, Stephen continued to collect key masterpieces by Paul Cézanne, Édouard Vuillard, and Pablo Picasso throughout his life.
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