'Goya To Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection' (Courtauld until May 26 2025): 'Now That's What I Call Art....'

Francisco Goya, Still Life - Three Salmon Steaks, 1808-12, Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’, Winterthur, Switzerland.

Compilation albums are always a bit soulless - full of great tracks but never quite the sum of the their parts. So it proves at the Courtauld where the curators have cherry-picked some of the best nineteenth century paintings from the Oskar Reinhart collection in Switzerland and created a 'Now that's what I call Art...' In many ways it is a marriage made in heaven - Samuel Courtauld and Reinhart were mirror images, both industrial philanthropists and art lovers who gifted their respective collections to the public, and actually met. It is also very definitely a marriage of convenience - the Reinhart collection is currently mothballed as its museum location gets a facelift and no institution can resist the marketing lure of Impressionism. (The pendant in me balks at the tacit description of Van Gogh, Lautrec and Picasso as Impressionist). The curators pay lip-service to giving this show a theme: ostensibly it has a narrative in which Goya is the father of modern art, but this is never told with any great conviction in the labelling, or in the choice of works (you sense they came first and the argument followed to fit). Equally, the Courtauld-Reinhart links, which are interesting, are not really exploited. Instead of integrating the two collections - which would have admittedly required more effort and cost - you are simply told to clock parallel paintings on your way out.

It all starts so well. On one wall, Goya's three salmon steaks leer menacingly and Gericault's Man Suffering from Delusions of Military Rank stares skyward in plaintiff bewilderment. It is impossible to look away and the more you stare back, the more these works draw you into their haunted interiors. Goya's salmon are like the sinister sister skull of Holbein's Ambassadors, oblique, eyeless and open mouthed in a silent scream. Or perhaps the discarded mask of a carnival clown. His ketchup blood, like that in the Third of May, is an unnecessary horror and yet also the painting's final potency. It is the memories of Goya's implied conflict which haunt Gericault's soldier, his face, too, shadowed and starved into a portending skull. Here, also, red - a noose-like tassell - is the final, terrible flourish. Madness hangs in the air. But if these two paintings are the starting point, where do they lead? The next still life one sees is a bland, floral oversized Renoir. The bleak, understated monochrome is mirrored across the room in Cezanne's early portrait of Dominique Aubert, yet here paint is trowelled on, a barrier rather than a vehicle to empathy. It is not until Van Gogh's acidic, alienting hospital ward in the next room, that anything packs the same emotional punch.

Vincent van Gogh, Ward in a Hospital in Arles, 1889, Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’, Winterthur, Switzerland.

Renoir. There are always some filler tracks on a compilation album, but three very similar Renoirs in a row is a problem, unless you are a devotee, as Reinhart obviously was and I am not. Unevenness dogs the whole show - and it is not a big enough show to hide it - so, alongside the rough, foaming power of Courbet's seascape you have a soft-porn, studio-lit, Ingres-necked model besporting herself in The Hammock. It is particularly queasy opposite the quiet dignity of Corot's Girl Reading. Monet's masterful evocation of ice on the Seine is one of those paintings which captures you across a room and becomes a completely different, arguably even better, picture close up. Eerily calm reflections zig zag in juxtaposition with the textured solidity of the chunks of ice. Monochrome misted chill disguises a complexity of colour. Next to it, Sisley is just too easy to ignore. The Monet, arguably, lessens everyone else in the room. Manet's Au Cafe, which I've always rather liked, seemed like an awkward collection of missteps and inconsistencies. Both it and the Lautrec next door are best viewed from a distance, across a crowded room, as the captured slices of life they purport to be. 

Goya to the Impressionists is disappointing only because it sets expectations high. There are pictures which would be worth the entrance fee on their own, and with the odd exception, all the works are pretty classy. You can't really complain about an exhibition which offers three great Cezannes in a row, or brings you such an unexpected Van Gogh. In both cases London has been recently spoilt by large exhibitions but these works still feel fresh. But a great show needs more than great art and the curatorial heart here is hollow. It feels like such a missed opportunity, for instance, not to have tried to unite Au Cafe with its other half from across town at the National Gallery, (especially as the latter was purchased with Courtauld money) or failing that, hang it next to the Bar at the Folies Bergere. It is almost criminal to have two Daumier Don Quixotes literally on either side of a wall and not actually hang them together. Like the Daumiers, this exhibition feels like the unfinished ghost of something great.