Samuel Courtauld (art collector)
Encyclopedia
Sydney Courtauld
Sydney Courtauld JP was a Crepe and Silk manufacturer, and part of the Courtauld family empire in Great Britain-Personal life:He was born on 10 March 1840 in Bocking, Braintree, Essex. He was the son of George Courtauld and Susanna Sewell . He married Sarah Lucy Sharpe on 4 April 1865 at the...
(10 March 1840 - 20 October 1899) and Sarah Lucy Sharpe (1844-1906) was an English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
industrialist (great-nephew of textile magnate Samuel Courtauld
Samuel Courtauld (industrialist)
Samuel Courtauld was an industrialist and Unitarian, chiefly remembered as the driving force behind the rapid growth of the Courtauld textile business in Britain....
) who is best remembered as an art collector. He founded the Courtauld Institute of Art
Courtauld Institute of Art
The Courtauld Institute of Art is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art. The Courtauld is one of the premier centres for the teaching of art history in the world; it was the only History of Art department in the UK to be awarded a top...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1932 and, after a series of gifts during the 1930s, bequeathed his collection to it upon his death.
By the early 20th century, the Courtauld family business had become a major international company, having successfully developed and marketed rayon
Rayon
Rayon is a manufactured regenerated cellulose fiber. Because it is produced from naturally occurring polymers, it is neither a truly synthetic fiber nor a natural fiber; it is a semi-synthetic or artificial fiber. Rayon is known by the names viscose rayon and art silk in the textile industry...
, an artificial fibre and inexpensive silk
Silk
Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...
substitute. Samuel Courtauld took charge of the firm from 1908 as general manager and as chairman from 1921 to 1946.
Personal life
He was educated at Rugby SchoolRugby School
Rugby School is a co-educational day and boarding school located in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire, England. It is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain.-History:...
.
He became interested in art after seeing the Hugh Lane
Hugh Lane
Sir Hugh Percy Lane is best known for establishing Dublin's Municipal Gallery of Modern Art and for his remarkable contribution to the visual arts in Ireland...
collection on exhibition at the Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
in 1917. However, his career as a collector started in 1922 following an exhibition of French art
French art
French art consists of the visual and plastic arts originating from the geographical area of France...
at the Burlington Fine Arts Club
Burlington Fine Arts Club
The Burlington Fine Arts Club was a London gentlemen's club, now dissolved, which was established in 1866 and was disbanded in 1952. It was based at 17 Savile Row....
. Courtauld was one of the first collectors to display interest in French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. During the 1920s, he assembled an extensive collection including masterpieces by Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
(Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear) or (Peach Blossom in the Crau) previously owned by Anna Boch
Anna Boch
Anna Rosalie Boch was a Belgian painter, born in Saint-Vaast, Hainaut. Anna Boch died in Ixelles in 1936 and is interred there in the Ixelles Cemetery, Brussels, Belgium.-Artistic style:...
, Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
(A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère , painted and exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1882, was the last major work by French painter Édouard Manet. It depicts a scene in the Folies Bergère nightclub in Paris...
), Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
(Montagne Sainte-Victoire
Mont Sainte-Victoire (Cézanne)
Mont Sainte-Victoire is a series of oil paintings by a French artist Paul Cézanne.-Description:Mont Sainte-Victoire is a mountain in France. Cézanne could see the mountain from his house, and it became the subject of a number of his paintings....
) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...
(La Loge
La loge (painting)
La loge is an 1874 oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, considered one of his masterpieces. It is part of the collection at Courtauld Institute of Art in London.-External links:* via Courtauld Institute Galleries...
). The core elements of his collection were accumulated between 1926 and 1930, though his passion dwindled somewhat following the death of his wife Elizabeth (known as Lil) in 1931. Samuel founded the Courtauld Institute with Viscount Lee of Fareham
Arthur Lee, 1st Viscount Lee of Fareham
Arthur Hamilton Lee, 1st Viscount Lee of Fareham, GCB, GBE, GCSI, PC was a British soldier, diplomat, politician and patron of the arts. After military postings and an assignment to the British Embassy in Washington, he entered politics and served as Minster of Agriculture and Fisheries and First...
and Sir Robert Witt in 1930.
Samuel provided the bulk of the money for the founding of the Courtauld Institute. His wealth came from the textile business, but on both sides of his family there were connections with the arts and traditions of patronage going back several generations. Courtauld loved pictures and wrote poems about them. On the advice of Roger Fry
Roger Fry
Roger Eliot Fry was an English artist and art critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism...
and others he bought French Impressionists and Cézannes and took out a lease on the best Robert Adam
Robert Adam
Robert Adam was a Scottish neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam , Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under him...
house in London, Home House
Home House
Home House is a Georgian town house at 20 Portman Square, London. James Wyatt was appointed to design it by Elizabeth, Countess of Home in 1776, but by 1777 he had been sacked and replaced by Robert Adam. Elizabeth left the completed house on her death in 1784 to her nephew William Gale, who in...
, 20 Portman Square
Portman Square
Portman Square is a square in London, part of the Portman Estate. It is located at the western end of Wigmore Street, which connects it to Cavendish Square to its east. It is served by London bus route 274...
, in which to display them - a novel and stunning combination. His example was emulated by his younger brother Stephen, who converted the medieval ruins of Eltham Palace into an Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
mansion. Samuel Courtauld was the real Maecenas of the trio, and when his wife died in 1931, he made over the house in Portman Square, together with the pictures, for the use of the new institute until such time as permanent accommodation could be found for them. In the event the Portman Square house was to be the institute's home for almost sixty years.
Courtauld also created a £50,000 acquisition fund for the Tate
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
and National
National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
galleries, helping lay the foundations of national collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art.
Family
Samuel Courtauld married Elizabeth Theresa Frances Kelsey on 20 June 1901. The children from this marriage included:- Sydney Courtauld (1902-1954) married Rab ButlerRab ButlerRichard Austen Butler, Baron Butler of Saffron Walden, KG CH DL PC , who invariably signed his name R. A. Butler and was familiarly known as Rab, was a British Conservative politician...
. - Augustine CourtauldAugustine CourtauldAugustine Courtauld , often called August Courtauld, was a yachtsman and British Arctic explorer, best known for serving as the solo meteorologist of a winter observation post, Icecap Station, located in the interior of Greenland in 1930-1931...
(1904-1959) was an explorer, noted for his pioneering observations of the climate of the icecapIcecapIcecap my refer to* Ice cap, a geographical feature* Icecap , a blog skeptical of global warming* Raleigh IceCaps, a defunct ECHL Hockey Team...
of GreenlandGreenlandGreenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
.
Samuel's younger brother, Stephen Courtauld
Stephen Courtauld
Sir Stephen Lewis Courtauld, MC was a member of the wealthy English Courtauld textile family...
, was also an arts patron and is remembered for his work on restoring Eltham Palace
Eltham Palace
Eltham Palace is a large house in Eltham, within the London Borough of Greenwich, South East London, England. It is an unoccupied royal residence and owned by the Crown Estate. In 1995 its management was handed over to English Heritage which restored the building in 1999 and opened it to the public...
. Samuel's son,