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5 February 2025From Goya to Impressionism
Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection at the Courtauld Gallery.
Words: Dan Hayes
L ondon’s Courtauld Gallery will showcase an exhibition of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings from Switzerland’s Oskar Reinhart Collection this spring.
The exhibition will begin with a selection of works by major 19th-century artists who preceded and inspired the Impressionists, including Francisco Goya, Theodore Géricault and Gustave Courbet.
These will provide the appetiser for the main event – a remarkable mixture of Impressionist masterpieces that includes Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s representation of the female performer The Clown Cha-U-Kao, Edouard Manet’s Au Café and Vincent Van Gogh’s A Ward in the Hospital at Arles and The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles.
Based in Winterthur, Switzerland, the Oskar Reinhart Collection includes works ranging from old master paintings to an exceptional assemblage of Impressionist pieces.
Featuring more than 200 works, the collection was assembled in the first half of the 20th century by Swiss collector Oskar Reinhart. He then bequeathed it (and his impressive house) to the Swiss confederation, who in 1970 opened it as a public museum.
Reinhart was a direct contemporary of Samuel Courtauld, founder of The Courtauld Institute of Art. They shared a similar taste in artworks and are known to have met. This exhibition will bring many of the Swiss collector’s paintings to the UK for the very first time.