Samuel Courtauld’s great collection

In 1929, Samuel Courtauld owned the most important collection of works by Paul Gauguin in England: five paintings, ten woodcuts and a sculpture. He subsequently sold two of the paintings, but for this show the gallery that bears Courtauld’s name has borrowed them back. One of them is the very beautiful ‘Martinique Landscape’ (1887), now owned by the National Galleries of Scotland, in which colour and pattern lock together in the most subtle and satisfying way. Even the rather startling turquoise with which the gallery’s walls have been painted cannot distract from its powerful presence.

The other great painting here is supposedly ‘The Dream’, which Roger Fry declared was ‘the masterpiece of Gauguin’. The best bit of this painting is the landscape through the window: I find the figures rather sullen. Much more interesting is ‘Nevermore’, a deeply sensual and moody painting that the National Gallery passed up the chance of buying. Its touches of menace make it an altogether deeper statement, and Gauguin considered it one of his masterpieces.

The early Brittany landscape with haystacks is good — note the particularly fine use of green with flashes of orange-red — but the figures are the least convincing aspect of this image, which would have made a magnificent abstract. I also liked the two red-chalk studies of a bearded man, who looks a little like Gauguin himself, though the artist’s aquiline nose has been squashed. The very early marble portrait of his wife, Mette, is interesting if uninspired, and probably made in collaboration with a professional sculptor. And the wood engravings deserve serious study.

This one-room exhibition is a great delight, the sort of thing the Courtauld does so well. The first in a new series, entitled ‘Summer Showcase’, it focuses on the collection, giving something of its history.