Now open at London’s Courtauld Gallery is the first ever exhibition to be staged outside of Winterthur, Switzerland of the Oskar Reinhart Collection. The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Goya to Impressionism. Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection presents an exceptional selection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings including some of the greatest paintings by luminaries including Manet, Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh and more.
The Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’ in Winterthur, Switzerland, is one of the most remarkable art museums of its kind. Featuring over 200 works of art – ranging from old master paintings and drawings to a fabled group of Impressionist art – the collection was assembled in the first half of the 20th century by Oskar Reinhart (1885-1965), whose family was associated with one of the world’s leading trading companies. Reinhart bequeathed his collection and house to the Swiss confederation, and it opened as a public museum in 1970 in his beautiful, large villa on the outskirts of Winterthur, close to Zurich, called ‘Am Römerholz’.
This exhibition opens with a selection of major paintings by artists who preceded the Impressionists, including Goya’s Still Life with Three Salmon Steaks (c.1808-12), Géricault’s A Man Suffering from Delusions of Military Rank (c.1819-22) and Courbet’s provocative The Hammock (1844).
At the heart of the exhibition are some of the most famous paintings of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, including Toulouse-Lautrec’s striking representation of the female performer The Clown Cha-U-Kao (1895), Manet’s groundbreaking depiction of modern life Au Café (1878), and a group of sensational works by Renoir and Cezanne.
A further highlight is the pair of celebrated paintings by Van Gogh, A Ward in the Hospital at Arles and The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles (1889), which illustrate the hospital where he had been a patient following his earlier mental breakdown and the mutilation of his ear, as seen in Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear in The Courtauld’s collection. The two paintings are presented together for the very first time in London at The Courtauld.
Oskar Reinhart was a direct contemporary of Samuel Courtauld, founder of The Courtauld Institute of Art, and they are known to have met. This exhibition, which brings many of Reinhart’s paintings to the United Kingdom for the very first time, is also an opportunity to note the close affinities between the Oskar Reinhart Collection and the Courtauld Gallery’s permanent collection – showing shared tastes.
For further information: courtauld.ac.uk
Image: Installation view, Goya to Impressionism. Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection, The Courtauld Gallery © Fergus Carmichael
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