The collection of 19th century paintings amassed by the Swiss collector Oskar Reinhart could be seen as a "mirror image" of that acquired by Britain's Samuel Courtauld, said Mark Hudson in The Independent. "Both were created in the early 20th century by wealthy businessmen with a philanthropic bent and an obsession with impressionism." Both men acquired works by many of the same artists and ensured that, after their deaths, their collections would be kept intact and displayed together in dedicated galleries.
The building in which Reinhart's pictures are normally on show in Winterthur, Switzerland, is currently closed for renovations, so some of its "key masterpieces" have been transported to the UK for a modestly sized but rather fine exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery. The result is a show to make you "fall in love" with the impressionists and their precursors all over again. Featuring two dozen canvases by the likes of Monet, Manet, Gauguin, Cézanne, van Gogh and Picasso, it provides some "vivid and often surprising glimpses" into a pivotal moment in modern art history.
It begins promisingly, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. The first thing we see is a "drop-dead brilliant" Goya still life depicting three thick steaks of salmon (c.1808-12), painted at the height of the Peninsular War. Their "pink interiors" are turned upwards "with holes where the vertebrae were", "deep red blood" dripping from one. They look for all the world like wounded human bodies.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Latest Videos FromThe Week
Other early 19th century paintings are also wonderful: Gustave Courbet depicts "a massive wave" building into "explosive white foam near the shore", while Théodore Géricault's "A Man Suffering from Delusions of Military Rank" (c.1819-22) is a harrowing portrait of "a suffering soul" incarcerated in a mental hospital. Later on, however, the fun stops: the "row of soppy, second-rate Renoirs live down to every stereotype of this big impressionist softy". Courtauld and Reinhart were fans of the same artists, and their collections are too similar to make this exhibition "exciting". Reinhart's pictures, moreover, aren't nearly as good as Courtauld's.
I disagree, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. Many pictures here are "off the scale" in terms of quality. Consider the two van Goghs, for instance. Both were painted at a hospital in Arles after the artist cut off his own ear: one shows the claustrophobic interior of his ward, "dominated by a stove's skew-whiff flue pipe"; the other, the facility's "cloister-like inner courtyard". Or there is a "pinkish wintry landscape" by Monet, in which he captures ice breaking up on the Seine, rendering it with "strokes of white, turquoise and indigo". There may be no real "thesis to this somewhat-scattershot endeavour", but the "A-list allure" of the best stuff here makes the show a must.
The Courtauld Gallery, London. Until 26 May
