Louis Vuitton Foundation: The Courtauld Collection

The appearance of the Courtauld Collection at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris is another of those cases where, when a museum is undergoing serious renovation, it ships its collection to another museum, or other museums, for the duration. Always better to be seen than to be crated. We first saw the Girl With the Pearl (Ear Ring) in San Francisco one year, then saw it again at the Mauritzhuis in Rotterdam a year later. Anyhow, the Courtauld Collection, from London, is an important Impressionist collection. Mr. Courtauld was of French Huguenot extraction, made his fortune developing and selling rayon, the first synthetic textile, and spent it investing in art, art history, and art education. For the time, I imagine, he was a fairly bold investor. The exhibition was right at home in Paris.

Manet, Corner of a Cafe, 1879

A draft of Manet's Le Dejeuner...Courtauld collected not only final paintings
but also sketches, early versions, correspondence related to the work

Manet, A Bar At The Folies-Bergere, 1882

Monet, Antibes, 1888; it's changed a bit

Monet, The Gare Saint Lazare, 1877

A bit of the letters collection on display

Cezanne, Man with a Pipe, 1892

Cezanne, The Card Players, 1892; we'd see another of this at the d'Orsay in a few
days

Gauguin, Haystacks, 1889

Modigliani, Female Nude, 1916

Van Gogh, Wheatfield with Cypresses, 1889; that wheat field?

"I cut myself shaving"

Van Gogh, Peach Trees in Blossom, 1889

At the end of the exhibition, there was an entire room of Turner watercolors,
some earlier ones, but several of the later ones, obviously related to what would
become Impressionism; this, his Falls of the Rhine at Schafhausen, 1841

Dawn after the Wreck, 1841

Mt. Blanc, above Courmayeur, 1810; it's changed there too; on the whole, an
impressive and important collection, beautifully displayed and interpreted...