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From: Jaques Tout
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 30 May 2001
The Courtauld Gallery- Somerset House- London UK 2001
Probably the best small collection in London, better even than the Wallace or Dulwich, free to get in of you are a student ( art student?), and with the most beautiful fountained courtyard behind it, and the back entrance to the yard leads to a terrace overlooking the Thames. An unusually pleasing combination for London. People like the café, I find it a bit stuffy.
First floor has quite good medieval, early stuff. Second floor exceptional Rubens landscape, little perfect Breughel, good Renaissance and English Painting. Third floor jam packed with balanced and exceptional collection of Impressionists and the like. Manets, Cezannes, excellent tiny Seurats, good Van Goghs, wondrous Renoirs, a beautiful Morisot, great Gauguins, Monets. Look in the small rooms and the back for some stilted English post-impressionism , a funny Graham Sutherland, and perhaps a Rousseau , Bonnard, and a Derain that will please you.
Compare and contrast. Ask yourself why English painting is so terrible after Gainsborough. Enjoy a collection better than both Tates.
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