January 2009

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The Courtauld Gallery is famed for its Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings and drawings, most especially the works of Cézanne, of which it holds the largest number in Britain. This important collection is the subject of  a major exhibition this summer celebrating the Courtauld Institute’s 75th anniversary. As well as Cézanne’s paintings, drawings and letters, three of his eight prints feature, including an etching, Guillaumin au Pendu, recently acquired in honour of the anniversary. To complement the exhibition, a small display of 19th- and early-20th-century French prints is shown in a nearby room. A further 30 are being exhibited at artsdepot in North Finchley, London, making this relatively little-known area of the collection available to a much wider audience.

The French works represent a small proportion of the total collection of around 20,000 prints, acquired over the years from a number of generous benefactors, which includes fine examples by Canaletto, Piranesi, Claude and Hogarth, to name but a few artists. The bulk of the collection consists of many thousand reproductive engravings given by one of the founder members of the institute, Sir Robert Witt (1872-1952), whose bequest of approximately 3,800 drawings forms the core of the Courtauld’s extensive collection of works on paper. Although comparatively small in number, the original, as opposed to reproductive, prints (some 500-600 mostly black-and-white engravings, etchings and lithographs) make up in quality what they lack in quantity.

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