Raise a Glass for Samuel Courtauld

I start this week’s blog with a bottle of Chilean red, a 2017 Pinot Noir in fact. Costing £8.50 the wine tastes good and I am pleased if not a little surprised that I am also supporting the care and preservation of art with my purchase. The bottle tells me, ‘Founded in 1824, the National Gallery, London continues to provide a collection of paintings of the highest quality. By purchasing this wine, your contribution ensures future generations enjoy the paintings as we do today’. Ah, it tastes even better now.

The label also has a reproduction of a painting currently on display in the Courtauld Impressionists: From Manet to Cézanne exhibition. It’s one of my favourites in the show: The Boulevard Montmartre at Night painted by Camille Pissarro in about 1897. Unlike the glorious sunny days we’ve been experiencing recently, this painting, which belongs to the National Gallery, depicts a wet night. Artificially lit, the boulevard is a bustle of expressive brushstrokes; purples and blues are set against flickering warm yellows. Pissarro painted this scene many times from a window in a room at the Hôtel de Russie but this is his only attempt at capturing it at night. And, it is notable as one of the darkest paintings in the show.

The exhibition itself is simple and strong. Renovation work at the Courtauld Gallery has meant forty works from the collection have been loaned and exhibited alongside Impressionist works from the National Gallery. Twelve artists in 3 galleries tell a story. They tell the story of Impressionism through the work of Daumier, Manet, Monet, Degas, Pissarro, Seurat, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cézanne, Bonnard, Gauguin and Van Gogh. It’s quite a story as it documents two collections that were assembled between 1922 and 1931. Samuel Courtauld and his wife Elizabeth built up an impressive personal collection of modern French painting for their own London residence which the exhibition acknowledges with the large black and white reproduction photographs showing the paintings hung in various rooms in Home House. The other collection, made possible through the Courtauld Fund, included Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works for the nation's education and entertainment. Still not regarded proper art by the establishment at this time, the exhibition marks the brave and personal ambition of Courtauld himself. After Elizabeth’s death, Samuel donated their personal collection to the newly founded Courtauld Institute and so, for the first time, the story of two collections, personal and public, have been brought together.

The story of Courtauld’s taste is one many are keen to see but other stories are here too. Modern subjects, modern materials, modern techniques, modern aims, we move like a flaneur in Paris with music at the Tuileries Gardens, a Bar at the Folies-Bergère, nighttime on Boulevard Montmartre, there are dancers, voyeurs and dreamers and Jane Avril is spotted leaving the Moulin Rouge. There is rowing down the Seine at Argenteuil past bathers at Asnières before we head south to Antibes, Provence and Arles. The Impressionist use of modern, newly invented paints with their broad brushstrokes, their interest in the effects of colour and light and working out doors, ‘en plein air’, form part of these intertwined stories.

Claude Monet Antibes 1888

Although considered too revolutionary and rubbished by the art establishment when first painted, we are all now very familiar with French Impressionist painting. What I enjoyed most about this exhibition was seeing Courtauld’s goal realised. His beautiful collection catalogue, an edition of 20, and displayed here is the true story behind the exhibition. And so, like all good red wines, Impressionism needed time to breathe. Courtauld opened the bottle and I want to enjoy my glass in (front of) Monet’s Antibes.  

Santa Rita National Gallery Pinot Noir: https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/santa-rita-reserva-pinot-noir-75cl

Courtauld Impressionists: From Manet to Cézanne, the National Gallery, until 20 January 2019: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/courtauld-impressionists-from-manet-to-cezanne