Lesley Stevenson reports on how the astute business sense of Samuel
Courtauld stretched beyond rayon
THE current exhibition at the Courtauld Galleries is held in the Great
Room at Somerset House, the site of the English Royal Academy's
eighteenth-century summer exhibitions, which has recently been upgraded
and returned to something like its original appearance.
It is fitting that it focuses on the collection of Samuel Courtauld
(1876-1947), the industrialist who made his fortune in rayon, and whose
name has become synonymous with the finest collection of French
Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in England.
Although French nineteenth-century painting was being assembled in
Britain before Courtauld began buying after the First World War -- for
example by the Davies sisters whose collection now forms the nucleus of
the National Museums of Wales or Sir Hugh Lane whose works are now
divided between Dublin and the National Gallery in London -- Courtauld's
collection is undoubtedly of higher quality and more comprehensive.
The works which he brought together, many of which are represented
here, were deliberately chosen with the express purpose of educating the
conservative English taste to the ''modern movement''.
The paintings which form the core of the Courtauld collection are some
of the best-known works produced within a 30-year period in France at
the end of the nineteenth century: Van Gogh's Self Portrait with a
Bandaged Ear, Renoir's La Loge, Manet's A Bar at the Folies Bergere and
Seurat's final major painting, Young Woman Powdering Herself. These have
been reunited with others that Courtauld bequeathed to family or friends
and a few stunning works from the National Gallery which were bought
with the #50,000 fund Courtauld donated in 1923 for the purchase of
Impressionist and Post-Impressionist pictures for British national
collections.
His astute business sense is evident here and the accompanying labels
record how much (or how little) were paid for the works, at a time when
the market in modern French paintings was becoming increasingly
competitive. Within three years of its being set up, the fund managed to
purchase some of the most important works in the National Gallery: four
Van Goghs, Seurat's immense Bathers at Asnieres and works by Monet,
Cezanne, Bonnard, Sisley and Degas.
Most of these are still along the Strand at the National Gallery, but
the immense debt it owes to Courtauld is suggested by the loan of three
major paintings: an early impressionist work by Monet, The Gare
St-Lazare; Renoir's stunning Boating on the Seine, painted in a
pulsating blue and orange; and Picasso's early Child with a Dove. There
is not a single second-rate work in the whole show, which offers a
fascinating insight into the taste of the 1920s and the works'
continuing appeal today.
* The Samuel Courtauld Collection, The Courtauld Institute Galleries,
Somerset House, Strand, London, to September 25.
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