Courtauld, Samuel

Courtauld, Samuel (1876–1947). British industrialist, collector, and philanthropist. He came from a family of prosperous silk merchants and was chairman of the textile firm Courtaulds Ltd. from 1921 to 1946. Although he enjoyed looking at paintings from a fairly early age, it was not until the turn of the century that art became a serious interest, and it was not until 1922 that he began collecting. He was greatly stimulated by the exhibition of Sir Hugh Lane's collection at the Tate Gallery in 1917, and Courtauld—like Lane—mainly bought 19th-century French paintings, chiefly works by the great masters of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. His collection included, for example, choice works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Monet, and Renoir (among them a portrait of the dealer Vollard, painted by Renoir in 1908 and bought from Vollard himself in 1927). In 1923 Courtauld gave the Tate Gallery £50,000 for the purchase of French paintings in his own area of interest (which was poorly represented), and this fund was used to buy 23 paintings over the next few years, transforming the Tate's collection. His interests also extended to living artists, and in 1925 he joined his friend Maynard Keynes in founding the London Artists’ Association to provide financial assistance to young painters and sculptors. In 1931 came his most famous benefaction when he endowed the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, Britain's first specialist centre for the study of the history of art. The Institute opened in 1932 in Courtauld's former home, a splendid 18th-century building (by James Wyatt and Robert Adam) in Portman Square, and in the same year Courtauld presented most of his collection to the University of London, together with funds for a building to house them. The Courtauld Institute Galleries opened in Woburn Square in 1958, and in 1989–90 all the Institute's activities and collections were brought together under one roof at Somerset House, fulfilling Courtauld's intention that students should work in intimate contact with original works of art. Kenneth Clark described Courtauld as a ‘quiet, modest man … a man of principle, if ever there was one', and Dennis Farr writes that ‘He brought to his collecting that combination of flair, energy, and sense of public duty that had marked his successful career as a leading industrialist. He did not seek to acquire social status by virtue of his collecting. Indeed, he refused a peerage in the 1937 Coronation Honours List, preferring to keep his independence and integrity’ (Impressionist & Post-Impressionist Masterpieces: The Courtauld Collection, 1987). Courtauld himself said that art was ‘religion's next-of-kin'.