Le Parti De L'impressionnisme

Le Parti de l’Impressionnisme AVANT-PROPOS bernard arnault, fondation louis vuitton/lvmh lord browne, the courtauld institute of art

PRÉFACE suzanne pagé, fondation louis vuitton ernst vegelin, la courtauld gallery

1. INTRODUCTION: SAMUEL COURTAULD ET SA COLLECTION karen serres

2. L’HISTOIRE DE LA FAMILLE COURTAULD ET SES CONTENTS ENTREPRISES, DE L’ARGENTERIE AU TEXTILE alexandra gerstein

3. LA RÉCEPTION DE L’ART MODERNE FRANCAIS EN ANGLETERRE AVANT SAMUEL COURTAULD barnaby wright

4. PERCY MOORE TURNER ET L’INDEPENDENT GALLERY, LE CONSEILLER LE PLUS PROCHE DE SAMUEL COURTAULD dimitri salmon

5. SEURAT DANS LA COLLECTION PRIVÉE DE SAMUEL COURTAULD: UNE HISTOIRE DES ACHATS sébastien chauffour

6. SAMUEL COURTAULD À LA NATIONAL GALLERY anne robbins

7. SAMUEL COURTAULD, AU-DELÀ DE LA COLLECTION ernst vegelin

8. REGARDS CROISÉS: BRIDGET RILEY, RICHARD SERRA ET JEFF WALL angéline scherf

ANNEXES

6 7 PAUL CÉZANNE 1839–1906

8 paul cézanne 44 APPLES, BOTTLE AND CHAIRBACK c. 1904–06

Graphite and watercolour on wove paper, 46.2 x 60.4 cm

provenance In his studio in Les Lauves, in the hills north of Aix-en-Provence, Cézanne Purchased by Samuel Courtauld from Wildenstein & Co., produced an important group of still-life watercolours, of which this London, September 1937, for £ 3,500; Courtauld Bequest, drawing is among the most magnificent. Remarkable for their sense 1948 of freedom, imagination and movement, these late watercolours are The Courtauld Gallery, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust) unsigned and undated, and generally made on a large scale. The group varies in degree of finish and complexity, and is characterised by the use of intense primary colours, with the subtle interplay of overlapping washes allowing for a display of incredibly rich tonalities, from the warmest reds and yellows to cooler blues and greens. It is these masterful contrasts of colours that continue to captivate the viewer. While still life represented a very small proportion of Cézanne’s work in the 1870s, during the 1880s and 1890s the artist began to engage more closely with the genre. But it was really in the works executed while at Les Lauves that he fully developed his personal vision of the genre, reaching a climax in these watercolours, demonstrate how he pushed the boundaries of the medium. The skilful dialogue between pencil marks and transparent brushstrokes, as well as the luminosity of the paper reserve, are key features of the late watercolours. To this group belong some twenty-four still lifes composed of ordinary studio props such as fruits and bowls, bottles and glasses, as well as skulls and teapots, presented on tables and consoles.1 Some of these objects can still be identified today among the things that were left in his studio (fig. 1).2 Cézanne moved into Les Lauves in early September 1902, at the age of sixty-three, having worked before then at the Jas de Bouffan, his family residence west of Aix. Technically, this watercolour is a tour de force of looping, zigzagging, hatching pencil-marks and brushstrokes, all of which form a final composition that gives the impression of having been achieved with great ease. The strokes of colour and the graphite lines create an evocative, 1 decorative effect that distances these objects from reality and moves them View of Cézanne’s studio at Les Lauves, c. 1953 into the realm of pure imagination. In his late years, Cézanne told the (reproduced in C. Armstrong, Cézanne in the Studio. Still Life in watercolors, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty painter and critic Émile Bernard (1868–1941) that “to read nature is to see Museum, 2004, p. V) through the veil of interpretation in terms of coloured touches that

10 PAUL GAUGUIN 1848–1903

12 paul gauguin 56 NEVERMORE 1897 Oil on canvas, 60.5 x 116 cm

57 TE RERIOA 1897 Oil on canvas, 95.1 x 130.2 cm

provenance In a consignment of paintings that Gauguin sent from Tahiti to Paris in Nevermore: Purchased by Samuel Courtauld from Herbert March 1897 were two large canvases, part of a series of paintings of large Coleman, Manchester, before February 1927, price figures in interiors or highly stylised landscapes that had occupied the unknown; Courtauld Gift, 1932; Te Rerioa: Purchased by artist for the previous several months: Nevermore and Te Rerioa. Painted Samuel Courtauld from Paul Rosenberg, Paris, July 1929, for £13,600; Courtauld Gift, 1932 within weeks of each other, they are linked by their enigmatic subject matter and their concern for decorative detail, which plays as important a The Courtauld Gallery, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust) role in suggesting – and frustrating – a reading of the paintings as do the figures themselves. Gauguin began Nevermore first, in February 1897. Its narrow, frieze-like format is unusual in his oeuvre, as is the thick, smooth paint layer; the latter is the result of his having reused a canvas. (The original composition, a tropical landscape, can be discerned with the aid of an infrared scanner.) The reclining female nude who dominates the composition alludes to European precedents such as Titian’s nudes and Manet’s Olympia, a photograph of which Gauguin had taken with him to Tahiti. Her relationship to the two figures conversing in the background has been left deliberately unclear, although the upward slant of her gaze suggests that she is aware of their presence and listening to their conversation. Whether the background figures are human visitors or malevolent spirits is likewise ambiguous. However, the resemblance of the right-hand figure to a tupapau, the Tahitian spirit of the dead who recurs throughout Gauguin’s oeuvre, sometimes recast in human form, is unlikely to be coincidental;1 indeed, the nude’s pose and expression harkens back to a masterpiece from his first Tahitian sojourn, Manao tupapau (fig. xx). Describing Nevermore to his friend Daniel de Monfreid, he claimed that he wished, ‘by means of a simple nude, to suggest a certain long-lost barbarian luxury’. 2 This ‘barbarian luxury’ extends to the interior, decorated with stylised vegetal motifs in rich, sombre colours and divided into irregular compartments, which recalls a real interior decorated by Gauguin in 1889 for Marie Henry’s inn in Le Pouldu, Brittany.3 The critic Gabriel-Albert Aurier had described

14 ACCOMPAGNE L’EXPOSITION FONDATION LOUIS VUITTON, PARIS 20 FÉVRIER – 17 JUIN 2019

sous la direction de Karen Serres et Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen

Samuel Courtauld: Le Parti de l’Impressionisme accompagne l’exposition majeure du printemps 2019 à la Fondation Louis Vuitton à Paris qui mettra en lumière l’industriel et mécène anglais Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947), l’un des plus importants collectionneurs du XXe siècle. Le catalogue et l’exposition présenteront son extraordinaire collection d’art impressionniste, qui n’a pas été vu à Paris depuis plus de soixante ans. Courtauld constitua l’une des plus importantes collections d’art impressionniste au monde. Au cours des années 1920, il rassembla un ensemble exceptionnel de tableaux de tous les plus importants peintres impressionnistes, du chef d’œuvre de jeunesse de Renoir, La Loge, à la dernière grande toile de Manet, l’emblématique Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère. Sa collection comprenait également Nevermore, le grand nu tahitien de Gauguin, et l’un des plus célèbres tableaux de Van Gogh, Autoportrait à l’oreille bandée, dont ce sera la première présentation à Paris depuis l’exposition organisée en 1955 au musée de l’Orangerie. Occasion unique de découvrir quelques-unes des plus grandes peintures françaises de la fin du XIXe siècle et du tout début du XXe, l’exposition illustrera le rôle pionnier de Samuel Courtauld et son influence dans la reconnaissance de l’impressionnisme au Royaume-Uni. Tout particulièrement, il joua un rôle fondamental dans la reconnaissance de Cézanne et rassembla le plus grand ensemble d’œuvres du peintre en Angleterre, dont la Montagne Sainte-Victoire au grand pin et l’une des cinq versions des célèbres Joueurs de cartes. Après une décennie consacrée à collectionner, il crée le Courtauld Institute of Art and Gallery à Londres auquel il fait don, en 1932, de la majorité de ses chefs-d’œuvre.

paul holberton publishing 20 Février 2019 isbn 978-1-911300-59-5 Relié, 245 x 280 mm 320 pages, 250 illustrations couleur €45.00