Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection

The Oskar Reinhart Collection in Winterthur, northern Switzerland, is one of the most remarkable of its kind, ranging from superlative Old Master paintings and drawings to exceptional examples of Impressionist art.

The catalogue accompanies an exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, London, which narrates the story of the collector, Oskar Reinhart (1885–1965), and presents an extraordinary group of masterpieces that are shown outside Winterthur for the first time in the history of the institution. Assembled in the first half of the twentieth century by Oskar Reinhart, the collection – apart from some donations to the state museum in Winterthur – opened to the public in 1958 in Reinhart’s beautiful villa ‘Am Römerholz’, where it has remained since.

A clause in Reinhart’s will, however, explicitly barred the museum from lending to other institutions. For the first time in its history, a rich selection of highlights from the Oskar Reinhart Collection will be displayed outside Switzerland, making the Courtauld exhibition a unique opportunity to appreciate its masterpieces, including major paintings by artists of the generation preceding the Impressionists, such as Goya, Géricault and Courbet. But the focus will be Reinhart’s extraordinary Impressionist and Post-Impressionist holdings, which include some of the greatest paintings of these movements, such as Manet’s groundbreaking depiction of modern life in Au Café, Toulouse-Lautrec’s striking representation of the female performer Clown Cha-U-Kao and a group of exceptional works by Paul Cezanne. Equally important is a pair of paintings by Van Gogh of the hospital in Arles, where he returned to paint after spending time there as a patient. The Reinhart Collection has close affinities with that of the Courtauld, which provides therefore the perfect setting to stage this unprecedented exhibition.