Positive first impressions as Goya given new lease of life

The Courtauld’s brilliant new show shines a light on the interconnectedness of Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Romantics and Realists, writes an enchanted Mark Hudson

- Mark Hudson

Is there much further mileage in Impressionism? There's certainly no shortage of public interest, judging by the huge response to the Courtauld’s recent Monet in London exhibition and the National’s just-closed Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers – the most popular show in the gallery’s history. But what are the chances of an exhibition of the greatest hits of a single Impressionist collection – however stellar – providing major new insights into this well-trodden territory?

At first sight, the Oskar Reinhart Collection (usually housed in Winterthur, Switzerland), feels almost the mirror image of the Courtauld. Both were created in the early 20th century by wealthy businessmen with a philanthropic bent and an obsession with Impressionism. With the former’s handsome premises near Zurich under refurbishment, a group of key masterpieces has arrived in London for a show that should perfectly complement the Courtauld’s stunning permanent Impressionist and PostImpressionist collections.

If the inclusion of Goya in the show’s title feels like a rather clumsy attempt to gild the lily by yanking in another meganame, a group of early 19th-century paintings at the start of the show proves otherwise as they deftly set up the glories to come. Goya’s bluntly matter-of-fact Still Life with Three Salmon Steaks (1808), a mound of oily pink fish against a dead black background could pass for the kind of determinedly mundane still life painting the great Impressionist pioneer Edouard Manet was producing 70 years later.