A visit to the Courtauld

Yesterday I made my second visit to the refurbished Courtauld Gallery at a cost of £57m as part of our art course.

We started on the first floor – the Medieval period and early Renaissance .

I’m not that moved by medieval art but our excellent tutor did explain its significance and context.

We owe the triptych to the medieval artists who would regard themselves as artisans rather than true painters.  The transition came later.

Oil was yet to be used so the images – mainly religious – were painted in egg, tempera and gold.

Oil paint – more transportable in tubes – and rolled up canvases enabled the painter to go out and paint the outdoors.  These medieval pictures were fragmentary, typically altar pieces but nonetheless I admired their colour.

I was more engaged by the portraiture of the northern early Renaissance artist Roger van der Weiden.

We went up a floor to the Renaissance and the sixteenth and seventeenth century collections.

There was a roomful of Peter Paul Rubens.

Rubens was more of an international diplomat with a huge studio of assistants. He may have supervised and signed the works but he would not have personally painted every detail.

I said to our  tutor that for me they lacked resonance and context to modern times. I was more intrigued and engaged by Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

The colours are so vivid and the representation of the two subjects and the animals in the Garden of Eden so delineated.

Finallly, we saw the jewels of the collection on the third floor – Impressionists and post-Impressionists and 20th Century Art.

The most celebrated – other than the Van Gogh self-portrait housed in the sell out separate exhibition – is the Bar at the Folies- Bergere.

It’s such an intriguing picture because of the relationship between viewer and subject.

At first sight the barmaid is staring blankly and bleakly  out at you but, hold on, the punters at the back are seen surely by a mirror.

If so, there should be a reflection of the barmaid but – if the second figure to the right is the actual barmaid – then she is out of line.

Then there is the empty seat amongst the audience. Manet was dying when he painted this picture.

Could that be a ‘momento mori’?

Le Dejeuner sur L’Herbe by Manet is also there and similarly one wonders why the nude lady picnicker is not listening to the male companion but staring out at you, the viewer.

One can only see a famous Claude Monet or Renoir so many times but a Manet repays many views.

There was quite a crowd round the Bar and, listening to some of them, they clearly could not ‘get’ the picture.

Also on this floor is a Renoir, a Degas ballet dancer, two Gauguins and the famous Paul Cezanne picture of Mont Victoire.

I left the new Courtauld with mixed feelings.

At the time that textile magnate Sam Courtauld was collecting you had to be a British artist to be in the Tate or, alternatively, deceased in order to be in the National Gallery.  This excluded European art.

My personal favourite was a  marine oil painting of Deauville  by Eugene Boudin

One can only admire the eye and vision of Courtauld then for acquiring works by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Manet , Seurat, Monet, Cezanne, Toulouse Lautrec and Degas.

Yet I was underwhelmed by the refurbishment.

Take the Art Cafe where we lunched.

It was unclear whether there was waiter service, self service or counter service and I ended up being confused, queuing 15 minutes for a expensive, dried up, brie ciabatta.

Exercise a bit of imagination and they could have tried to recreate the Bar at the Folies Bergers which would have made a different and appealing event venue.

There is the inevitable large shop bigger then the cafe

Our tutor explained that many pictures she loved, like the Matisse, were no longer on view.

The motive for the refurbishment is commercial but for me this only heightens the case for entry charges.

It is sometimes forgotten that the Courtauld is also  so an academic institution where art scholars like Martin Gayford studied.     The intention was to fuse the collection and the institution but this objective seems to have lost its way

This would catch the overseas visitor as well. In my recent visits to the Holburne and Walker museums and the Wallace Collection they have all charged fully for relatively small exhibitions – as did the Courtauld for the Van Gogh self portraits.

Membership, too, would assure patrons certainty of visit.

There are therefore many ways of generating revenue.

I am sure Sam Courtauld would have thought of them.