Le Parti de l’Impressionnisme

AVANT-PROPOS

bernard arnault, fondation louis vuitton/lvmhlord browne, the courtauld institute of art

PRÉFACE

suzanne pagé, fondation louis vuittonernst vegelin, la courtauld gallery

1. INTRODUCTION: SAMUEL COURTAULD ET SA COLLECTION

karen serres

2. L’HISTOIRE DE LA FAMILLE COURTAULD ET SES

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

CATALOGUE

Honoré Daumier | Édouard Manet | Constantin Guys | Edgar Degas | Camille Pissarro | Claude Monet | Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Alfred Sisley | Eugène Boudin | Paul Cézanne | Paul Gauguin | Georges Seurat | Vincent Van Gogh | Henri (le Douanier) Rousseau | Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec | Auguste Rodin | Édouard Vuillard | Pierre Bonnard | Amedeo Modigliani | Henri Matisse | Pablo Picasso

ANNEXES

CONTENTS

6 7

8

PAUL CÉZANNE1839–1906

10

44paul cézanne

APPLES, BOTTLE AND CHAIRBACK c. 1904–06

Graphite and watercolour on wove paper, 46.2 x 60.4 cm

In his studio in Les Lauves, in the hills north of Aix-en-Provence, Cézanne

produced an important group of still-life watercolours, of which this

drawing is among the most magnificent. Remarkable for their sense

of freedom, imagination and movement, these late watercolours are

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,

decorative effect that distances these objects from reality and moves them

into the realm of pure imagination. In his late years, Cézanne told the

painter and critic Émile Bernard (1868–1941) that “to read nature is to see

through the veil of interpretation in terms of coloured touches that

provenance

Purchased by Samuel Courtauld from Wildenstein & Co.,

London, September 1937, for £ 3,500; Courtauld Bequest,

1948

The Courtauld Gallery, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)

1

View of Cézanne’s studio at Les Lauves, c. 1953

(reproduced in C. Armstrong, Cézanne in the Studio.

Still Life in watercolors, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty

Museum, 2004, p. V)

12

PAUL GAUGUIN 1848–1903

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56

In a consignment of paintings that Gauguin sent from Tahiti to Paris in

March 1897 were two large canvases, part of a series of paintings of large

figures in interiors or highly stylised landscapes that had occupied the

artist for the previous several months: Nevermore and Te Rerioa. Painted

within weeks of each other, they are linked by their enigmatic subject

matter and their concern for decorative detail, which plays as important a

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

57

provenance

Nevermore: Purchased by Samuel Courtauld from Herbert

Coleman, Manchester, before February 1927, price

unknown; Courtauld Gift, 1932; Te Rerioa: Purchased by

Samuel Courtauld from Paul Rosenberg, Paris, July 1929,

for £13,600; Courtauld Gift, 1932

The Courtauld Gallery, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)

paul gauguin

NEVERMORE 1897

Oil on canvas, 60.5 x 116 cm

TE RERIOA 1897

Oil on canvas, 95.1 x 130.2 cm

ACCOMPAGNE L’EXPOSITIONFONDATION 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 publishing20 Février 2019

isbn 978-1-911300-59-5Relié, 245 x 280 mm

320 pages, 250 illustrations couleur€45.00