Goya to Impressionism at the Courtauld Gallery

The Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’ in Winterthur is closed for renovation and so a selection of works is currently on show at the Courtauld Gallery in London. It’s a small exhibition, occupying only two rooms, but the works nicely complement the Courtauld’s own collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. As a matter of fact I would have preferred if the paintings had been organized into a single exhibition. At Naples in Paris masterpieces from the Museo di Capodimonte were hung among works from the Louvre’s own collection, which I thought worked really well. A similar set-up might have worked here as well.

Samuel Courtauld and Oskar Reinhart started building their collection at more or less the same time with Courtauld also acquiring works for the National Gallery.

The exhibition opens with a wonderful painting by Francisco Goya of three salmon steaks. With its bold reds against a black background it prefigures Manet. It hangs next to a painting of a large wave crashing upon rocks by Gustave Courbet. It reminded me of Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” (1831), which I think is the more iconic of the two.

One of the highlights of the exhibition is “La Débâcle” (The Break-up of Ice on the Seine) (1880-81) by Claude Monet. The ice floes and the poplars are painted in almost abstract brushstrokes. It is a beautiful rendition of a tranquil winter’s day in the country. Another highlight is “Au Café” (1878) by Édouard Manet. In 1877, Manet began work on a large painting of the interior of the Café de Reichshoffen in Paris. Dissatisfied with the composition he cut the canvas in two and reworked both halves. The left side became “Au Café” and was eventually purchased by Oskar Reinhart, the right side became “Corner of a Café-Concert” and was acquired by the National Gallery with funds provided by Samuel Courtauld. It would have been nice if the Courtauld Gallery had borrowed it for the occasion so that both paintings could be viewed side by side. It so happened that I had just seen it at the National Gallery and had taken a snapshot and bought the postcard, which was a happy coincidence.

I was also delighted to see two paintings by Vincent van Gogh that I only knew from reproductions, “The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles” (1889) and “The Ward in the Hospital at Arles” (1889). Both were painted when Van Gogh was interned at the hospital in Arles after suffering a mental health crisis. They thus resonate with “Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear” (1889) in the Courtauld’s own collection, which Van Gogh painted shortly after leaving the hospital.

The exhibition includes several other wonderful paintings, such as “The Clown Cha-U-Kao” (1895) by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and “Girl Reading” (1850-55) by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. I’m only mentioning the ones that stood out to me. The exhibition also includes works by Renoir, Cezanne and Picasso.

I also enjoyed visiting the Courtauld Gallery’s permanent collection. August 2024, I slightly panicked when I read that a fire had broken out in the West Wing of Somerset House, which is also home to the Courtauld Gallery, but fortunately a disaster was narrowly avoided.

One of the highlights is “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère” (1882) by Édouard Manet. I also liked a painting of a bouquet of mallows by Monet, which he actually began in the early 1880s, but having set it aside, only finished around 1920. I always enjoy seeing how a bouquet of flowers emerges from what look like random brushstrokes from up close.

If you haven't visited the Oskar Reinhart collection, like myself, and if you haven't visited the Courtauld Gallery in a while, again like myself, this is an unmissable opportunity to see a large selection of wonderful impressionist and post-impressionist paintings.

Goya to Impressionism. Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection is at the Courtauld Gallery in London until 26 May 2025.