Lesley Stevenson reports on how the astute business sense of Samuel

Courtauld stretched beyond rayon

THE current exhibition at the Courtauld Galleries is held in the Great

Room at Somerset House, the site of the English Royal Academy's

eighteenth-century summer exhibitions, which has recently been upgraded

and returned to something like its original appearance.

It is fitting that it focuses on the collection of Samuel Courtauld

(1876-1947), the industrialist who made his fortune in rayon, and whose

name has become synonymous with the finest collection of French

Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in England.

Although French nineteenth-century painting was being assembled in

Britain before Courtauld began buying after the First World War -- for

example by the Davies sisters whose collection now forms the nucleus of

the National Museums of Wales or Sir Hugh Lane whose works are now

divided between Dublin and the National Gallery in London -- Courtauld's

collection is undoubtedly of higher quality and more comprehensive.

The works which he brought together, many of which are represented

here, were deliberately chosen with the express purpose of educating the

conservative English taste to the ''modern movement''.

The paintings which form the core of the Courtauld collection are some

of the best-known works produced within a 30-year period in France at

the end of the nineteenth century: Van Gogh's Self Portrait with a

Bandaged Ear, Renoir's La Loge, Manet's A Bar at the Folies Bergere and

Seurat's final major painting, Young Woman Powdering Herself. These have

been reunited with others that Courtauld bequeathed to family or friends

and a few stunning works from the National Gallery which were bought

with the #50,000 fund Courtauld donated in 1923 for the purchase of

Impressionist and Post-Impressionist pictures for British national

collections.

His astute business sense is evident here and the accompanying labels

record how much (or how little) were paid for the works, at a time when

the market in modern French paintings was becoming increasingly

competitive. Within three years of its being set up, the fund managed to

purchase some of the most important works in the National Gallery: four

Van Goghs, Seurat's immense Bathers at Asnieres and works by Monet,

Cezanne, Bonnard, Sisley and Degas.

Most of these are still along the Strand at the National Gallery, but

the immense debt it owes to Courtauld is suggested by the loan of three

major paintings: an early impressionist work by Monet, The Gare

St-Lazare; Renoir's stunning Boating on the Seine, painted in a

pulsating blue and orange; and Picasso's early Child with a Dove. There

is not a single second-rate work in the whole show, which offers a

fascinating insight into the taste of the 1920s and the works'

continuing appeal today.

* The Samuel Courtauld Collection, The Courtauld Institute Galleries,

Somerset House, Strand, London, to September 25.