Courtauld Institute

   The Courtauld Institute takes its name from Samuel Courtauld. Born into a Huguenot family that had fled from France to England shortly after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) and prospered, like many similar families, first as silversmiths and then as silk weavers, Courtauld became head of the textile firm bearing his name. His artistic interests were fostered by his wife, Elizabeth Kelsey, and he formed a considerable collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works of art, a sympathy for things French perhaps helping him to recognize their merits earlier than others did. A gift of £50,000 to London’s Tate Gallery in 1923 to help repair deficiencies in its holdings of French nineteenth-century paintings was followed eight years later by an even more significant act of patronage when, on the death of his wife, he endowed the Courtauld Institute. He was joined in the enterprise by Viscount Lee of Fareham (1868–1947), who had served as Director of Food Production in Lloyd George’s administration during the First World War, and by the lawyer Sir Robert Witt, who in 1903 had played an important part in the foundation of the National Art Collections Fund.

   The mission of the Courtauld Institute is the provision, at undergraduate, graduate diploma, MA and research degree levels, of training and education in the history of Western European art. It also runs courses in museum studies and the preservation and restoration of works of art. The Courtauld Institute has a close relationship with the Warburg Institute, which after being founded in Hamburg by Aby Warburg, moved to London in 1933 and is devoted particularly to studying the survival and evolution of the classical tradition in art and thought. The Journal of the Courtauld and Warburg Institute is published annually. Granted the status of an institution within London University in 1944, the Courtauld Institute moved in 1989 into Somerset House, one of London’s most impressive eighteenth-century buildings. There it has been possible to realize Courtauld’s dream of ensuring that students studying art history do so in the proximity of his munificent bequest of pictures. The paintings, complemented not only by rich holdings of Old Master drawings but by a comprehensive library of books and an extensive collection of slides and other reproductions, make the Courtauld Institute with its four professors and many other specialists an exceptionally well-endowed centre for art history studies, and the public is admitted to the gallery.

   See also: painting; Tate(s)

   CHRISTOPHER SMITH