The Courtauld Institute of Art (UK) is a self-governing college of the University of London

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

 specialising in the study of the history of art

History of art

The History of art refers to visual art which may be defined as any activity or product made by humans in a visual form for aesthetical or communicative purposes, expressing ideas, emotions or, in general, a worldview...

. The Courtauld is one of the premier centres for the teaching of art history in the world; it was the only History of Art department in the UK to be awarded a top 5* grade in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise, and was ranked second nationally for History of Art in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise and ranked first nationally for History and History of Art in the Guardian's 2011 University Guide.

History

It was founded in 1932 through the philanthropic efforts of the industrialist and art collector Samuel Courtauld

Samuel Courtauld (art collector)

Samuel Courtauld son of Sydney Courtauld and Sarah Lucy Sharpe was an English industrialist who is best remembered as an art collector...

, the diplomat and collector Lord Lee of Fareham

Arthur Lee, 1st Viscount Lee of Fareham

Arthur Hamilton Lee, 1st Viscount Lee of Fareham, GCB, GBE, GCSI, PC was a British soldier, diplomat, politician and patron of the arts. After military postings and an assignment to the British Embassy in Washington, he entered politics and served as Minster of Agriculture and Fisheries and First...

, and the art historian Sir Robert Witt

Robert Witt (art historian)

Sir Robert Clermont Witt, CBE was a British art historian, who, along with Samuel Courtauld and Lord Lee of Fareham, was a co-founder of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London....

. Originally the Courtauld Institute was based in Home House

Home House

Home House is a Georgian town house at 20 Portman Square, London. James Wyatt was appointed to design it by Elizabeth, Countess of Home in 1776, but by 1777 he had been sacked and replaced by Robert Adam. Elizabeth left the completed house on her death in 1784 to her nephew William Gale, who in...

, a Robert Adam

Robert Adam

Robert Adam was a Scottish neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam , Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under him...

-designed townhouse in Portman Square

Portman Square

Portman Square is a square in London, part of the Portman Estate. It is located at the western end of Wigmore Street, which connects it to Cavendish Square to its east. It is served by London bus route 274...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. Since 1989 it has been based in the North wing of Somerset House

Somerset House

Somerset House is a large building situated on the south side of the Strand in central London, England, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The central block of the Neoclassical building, the outstanding project of the architect Sir William Chambers, dates from 1776–96. It...

. The Courtauld celebrated its 75th anniversary during the 2007-8 academic year.

The Courtauld Gallery

The art collection at the Institute was begun by its founder, Samuel Courtauld

Samuel Courtauld (art collector)

Samuel Courtauld son of Sydney Courtauld and Sarah Lucy Sharpe was an English industrialist who is best remembered as an art collector...

, who presented an extensive collection of mainly French Impressionist

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

 and Post-Impressionist

Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...

 paintings in 1932, which was enhanced by further gifts in the 1930s and a bequest in 1948. His collection included such masterworks as Manet's

Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....

 A Bar at the Folies-Bergère

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère , painted and exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1882, was the last major work by French painter Édouard Manet. It depicts a scene in the Folies Bergère nightclub in Paris...

and a version of his Déjeuner sur l'Herbe

The Luncheon on the Grass

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe – originally titled Le Bain – is a large oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet created in 1862 and 1863. The painting depicts the juxtaposition of a female nude and a scantily dressed female bather on a picnic with two fully dressed men in a rural setting...

, Renoir's

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...

 La Loge

La loge (painting)

La loge is an 1874 oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, considered one of his masterpieces. It is part of the collection at Courtauld Institute of Art in London.-External links:* via Courtauld Institute Galleries...

, landscapes by Claude Monet

Claude Monet

Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...

 and Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...

, a ballet scene by Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...

 and a group of eight major works by Cézanne

Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...

. Other paintings include van Gogh's

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...

 Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Peach Blossoms in the Crau, Gauguin's

Paul Gauguin

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...

 Nevermore and Te Rerioa, as well as important works by Seurat, Henri "Douanier" Rousseau

Henri Rousseau

Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier , a humorous description of his occupation as a toll collector...

, Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an œuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern...

 and Modigliani

Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...

. In total, the Gallery contains some 530 paintings and over 26,000 drawings and prints.

Following the death of the eminent art critic Roger Fry

Roger Fry

Roger Eliot Fry was an English artist and art critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism...

 in 1934, the Institute received his collection of 20th-century art. Further bequests were added after the Second World War, most notably the collection of Old Master

Old Master

"Old Master" is a term for a European painter of skill who worked before about 1800, or a painting by such an artist. An "old master print" is an original print made by an artist in the same period...

 paintings assembled by Lord Lee. This included Cranach's

Lucas Cranach the Elder

Lucas Cranach the Elder , was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving...

 Adam and Eve and a sketch in oils by Peter Paul Rubens for what is arguably his masterpiece, the Deposition altarpiece

Altarpiece

An altarpiece is a picture or relief representing a religious subject and suspended in a frame behind the altar of a church. The altarpiece is often made up of two or more separate panels created using a technique known as panel painting. It is then called a diptych, triptych or polyptych for two,...

 in Antwerp Cathedral. Sir Robert Witt was also an outstanding benefactor to the Courtauld and bequeathed his important collection of Old Master and British drawings in 1952. In 1966 Mark Gambier-Parry bequeathed the diverse collection of art formed by his grandfather, Thomas Gambier Parry

Thomas Gambier Parry

Thomas Gambier Parry, J.P.,D.L., was an English artist and art collector. He is best remembered for his development of the Gambier Parry process of fresco painting....

, which ranged from Early Italian Renaissance painting

Early Renaissance painting

Renaissance art is the painting, sculpture and decorative arts of that period of European history known as the Renaissance, emerging as a distinct style in Italy in about 1400, in parallel with developments which occurred in philosophy, literature, music and science...

 to majolica

Maiolica

Maiolica is Italian tin-glazed pottery dating from the Renaissance. It is decorated in bright colours on a white background, frequently depicting historical and legendary scenes.-Name:...

, medieval enamel

Vitreous enamel

Vitreous enamel, also porcelain enamel in U.S. English, is a material made by fusing powdered glass to a substrate by firing, usually between 750 and 850 °C...

 and ivory

Ivory

Ivory is a term for dentine, which constitutes the bulk of the teeth and tusks of animals, when used as a material for art or manufacturing. Ivory has been important since ancient times for making a range of items, from ivory carvings to false teeth, fans, dominoes, joint tubes, piano keys and...

 carvings and other unusual art forms. Soon after (in 1967), the bequest of Dr. William Wycliffe Spooner (1882–1967) and his wife Mercie, added strength to the Gallery's collection of English watercolors by contributing works by J.R. Cozens and Francis Towne

Francis Towne

Francis Towne was a British watercolour landscape painter.-Biography:Towne was born in Isleworth in Middlesex the son of a corn chandler. In 1752 he was apprenticed to a leading coach painter in London, Thomas Brookshead...

.

In 1974 a group of thirteen watercolours by Turner was presented in memory of Sir Stephen Courtauld

Stephen Courtauld

Sir Stephen Lewis Courtauld, MC was a member of the wealthy English Courtauld textile family...

, famous for restoring Eltham Palace

Eltham Palace

Eltham Palace is a large house in Eltham, within the London Borough of Greenwich, South East London, England. It is an unoccupied royal residence and owned by the Crown Estate. In 1995 its management was handed over to English Heritage which restored the building in 1999 and opened it to the public...

, and the brother of Samuel Courtauld, one of the founders of the Institute. In 1978 the Courtauld received the Princes Gate Collection of Old Master paintings and drawings formed by Count Antoine Seilern. It includes paintings by Bruegel

Pieter Brueghel the Elder

Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a Flemish renaissance painter and printmaker known for his landscapes and peasant scenes . He is sometimes referred to as the "Peasant Bruegel" to distinguish him from other members of the Brueghel dynasty, but he is also the one generally meant when the context does...

, Quentin Matsys

Quentin Matsys

Quentin Matsys was a painter in the Flemish tradition and a founder of the Antwerp school. He was born at Leuven, where legend states he was trained as an ironsmith before becoming a painter...

, Van Dyck

Anthony van Dyck

Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England. He is most famous for his portraits of Charles I of England and his family and court, painted with a relaxed elegance that was to be the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next...

 and Tiepolo

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo , also known as Gianbattista or Giambattista Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice...

 and rivals the Samuel Courtauld Collection in splendour, being strongest in the works of Rubens.The bequest also included a group of 19th- and 20th-century works by Pissarro

Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...

, Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...

, Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...

 and Oskar Kokoschka

Oskar Kokoschka

Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.-Biography:...

. More recently the Lilian Browse and Alastair Hunter collections have given the Courtauld more late 19th- and 20th-century paintings, drawings and sculptures.

The Courtauld Gallery is open to the public and housed in The Strand

Strand, London

Strand is a street in the City of Westminster, London, England. The street is just over three-quarters of a mile long. It currently starts at Trafalgar Square and runs east to join Fleet Street at Temple Bar, which marks the boundary of the City of London at this point, though its historical length...

 Block of Somerset House, which was the first home for the Royal Academy

Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

 upon its foundation in 1768. The entrance to 'The Great Room', which housed the annual Summer Exhibition

Royal Academy summer exhibition

The Summer Exhibition is an open art exhibition held annually by the Royal Academy in Burlington House, Piccadilly in central London, England, during the summer months of June, July, and August...

, has the formidable inscription 'Let no stranger to the Muse

Muse

The Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature, are the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths...

s enter' in Ancient Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

.

The present Head of the Gallery (May 2009) is Dr Ernst Vegelin.

Paintings

Dutch School

• Gogh, Vincent Van
  Vincent van Gogh
  Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
  
   - 2 paintings;

English School

• Beechey, William
  William Beechey
  Sir Henry William Beechey , English portrait-painter, was born at Burford, the son of William Beechey and Hannah Read ....
  
   - 2 paintings;
• Gainsborough, Thomas
  Thomas Gainsborough
  Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Suffolk:Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let...
  
   - 2 paintings;
• Lely, Peter
  Peter Lely
  Sir Peter Lely was a painter of Dutch origin, whose career was nearly all spent in England, where he became the dominant portrait painter to the court.-Life:...
  
   - 3 paintings;

Flemish School

• Dyck, Anthony van
  Anthony van Dyck
  Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England. He is most famous for his portraits of Charles I of England and his family and court, painted with a relaxed elegance that was to be the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next...
  
   - 5 paintings;
• Bruegel, Pieter - 3 paintings;
• Massys, Quentin
  Quentin Matsys
  Quentin Matsys was a painter in the Flemish tradition and a founder of the Antwerp school. He was born at Leuven, where legend states he was trained as an ironsmith before becoming a painter...
  
   - 2 paintings;
• Rubens, Peter Paul - 29 paintings;
• Teniers, David
  David Teniers the Younger
  David Teniers the Younger was a Flemish artist born in Antwerp, the son of David Teniers the Elder. His son David Teniers III and his grandson David Teniers IV were also painters...
  
   - 10 paintings;

French School

• Cézanne, Paul
  Paul Cézanne
  Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
  
   - 12 paintings;
• Degas, Edgar
  Edgar Degas
  Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
  
   - 6 paintings;
• Gauguin, Eugène Henri Paul
  Paul Gauguin
  Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
  
   - 3 paintings;
• Gellée, Claude
  Claude Lorrain
  Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French Claude Gellée, , dit le Lorrain) Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French...
  
   - 1 painting;
• Manet, Édouard
  Édouard Manet
  Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
  
   - 4 paintings;
• Monet, Claude
  Claude Monet
  Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
  
   - 3 paintings;
• Pissarro, Camille
  Camille Pissarro
  Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...
  
   - 4 paintings;
• Seurat, Georges-Pierre
  Georges-Pierre Seurat
  Georges-Pierre Seurat was a French Post-Impressionist painter and draftsman. He is noted for his innovative use of drawing media and for devising a technique of painting known as pointillism...
  
   - 9 paintings;
• Renoir, Pierre Auguste - 4 paintings;
• Soutine, Chaim
  Chaim Soutine
  Chaïm Soutine was a Jewish painter from Belarus. Soutine made a major contribution to the expressionist movement while living in Paris....
  
   - 1 painting;

German School

• Lucas Cranach the Elder
  Lucas Cranach the Elder
  Lucas Cranach the Elder , was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving...
  
   - 1 painting;

Italian School

• Angelico, Fra
  Fra Angelico
  Fra Angelico , born Guido di Pietro, was an Early Italian Renaissance painter described by Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent"...
  
   - 4 paintings;
• Bellini, Giovanni
  Giovanni Bellini
  Giovanni Bellini was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. His father was Jacopo Bellini, his brother was Gentile Bellini, and his brother-in-law was Andrea Mantegna. He is considered to have revolutionized Venetian painting, moving it...
  
   - 1 painting;
• Botticelli, Sandro
  Sandro Botticelli
  Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...
  
   - 1 painting;
• Daddi, Bernardo
  Bernardo Daddi
  Bernardo Daddi was an early Italian renaissance painter and apprentice of Giotto. He was also influenced by the Sienese art of Lorenzetti....
  
   - 2 paintings;
• Lotto, Lorenzo
  Lorenzo Lotto
  Lorenzo Lotto was a Northern Italian painter draughtsman and illustrator, traditionally placed in the Venetian school. He painted mainly altarpieces, religious subjects and portraits...
  
   - 2 paintings;
• Perugino, Pietro
  Pietro Perugino
  Pietro Perugino , born Pietro Vannucci, was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Umbrian school, who developed some of the qualities that found classic expression in the High Renaissance...
  
   - 1 painting;
• Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista
  Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
  Giovanni Battista Tiepolo , also known as Gianbattista or Giambattista Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice...
  
   - 12 paintings;
• Tintoretto, Jacopo
  Tintoretto
  Tintoretto , real name Jacopo Comin, was a Venetian painter and a notable exponent of the Renaissance school. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso...
  
   - 2 paintings;

Spanish School

• Goya, Francisco
  Francisco Goya
  Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...
  
   - 1 painting;

Other study resources

The Courtauld has two photographic libraries which started as the private collections of two ennobled benefactors: the Conway library, covering architecture, architectural drawings, sculpture and illuminated manuscript

Illuminated manuscript

An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...

s, named after Lord Martin Conway and the Witt library, after Sir Robert Witt

Robert Witt (art historian)

Sir Robert Clermont Witt, CBE was a British art historian, who, along with Samuel Courtauld and Lord Lee of Fareham, was a co-founder of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London....

, covering paintings, drawings and engraving

Engraving

Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...

s and containing over 2,000,000 reproductions of works by over 70,000 artists. The Book Library is one of the UK's largest archives of art-historical books, periodicals and exhibition catalogues. There is a Slide Library which also covers films, and an IT suite.

An online image collection artandarchitecture.org.uk provides access to more than 40,000 images, including paintings and drawings from The Courtauld Gallery, and over 35,000 photographs of architecture and sculpture from the Conway Library. The site was developed with the support of the New Opportunities Fund. Two other websites courtauldimages.com and courtauldprints.com sell high resolution digital files to scholars, publishers and broadcasters, and photographic prints to a wide public audience.

The Courtauld uses a virtual learning environment to deliver course material to its current students.

Alumni

Many students of the Courtauld have gone on to become directors of major museums, including John Hayes (National Portrait Gallery, 1974–94), Anne d'Harnoncourt

Anne d'Harnoncourt

Anne d'Harnoncourt was an American museum director and historian of modern art. She was the Director and CEO of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a post she held from 1982 until her sudden and unexpected death in 2008...

 (Philadelphia Museum of Art

Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is among the largest art museums in the United States. It is located at the west end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park. The Museum was established in 1876 in conjunction with the Centennial Exposition of the same year...

, 1982–2008), Neil MacGregor

Neil MacGregor

Robert Neil MacGregor, OM, FSA is an art historian and museum director. He was the Editor of the Burlington Magazine from 1981 to 1987, the Director of the National Gallery, London, from 1987 to 2002, and was appointed Director of the British Museum in 2002...

 (National Gallery

National gallery

The National Gallery is an art gallery on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom.National Gallery may also refer to:*Armenia: National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan*Australia:**National Gallery of Australia, Canberra...

, 1987–2002; British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

 2002–), Sir Nicholas Serota

Nicholas Serota

Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota is a British art curator. Serota was director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, before becoming director of the Tate, the United Kingdom's national gallery of modern and British art in 1988. He was awarded a knighthood in 1999. He...

 (Tate

Tate

-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...

, 1988–), Sir Mark Jones

Mark Jones (museum director)

Sir Mark Ellis Powell Jones is a British art historian, numismatist and museum director; he is director of the Victoria and Albert Museum...

 (Victoria and Albert Museum

Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...

, 2001–), Nicholas Penny

Nicholas Penny

Nicholas Penny, FSA is a British art historian. Since Spring 2008 he has been director of the National Gallery in London....

 (National Gallery

National gallery

The National Gallery is an art gallery on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom.National Gallery may also refer to:*Armenia: National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan*Australia:**National Gallery of Australia, Canberra...

, 2008–), Kaywin Feldman (Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2008-), David Franklin

David Franklin (curator)

David Franklin is an art museum curator and director.In 2010, Franklin was named director of the Cleveland Museum of Art. He was formerly the deputy director of the National Gallery of Canada....

 (Cleveland Museum of Art

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art is an art museum situated in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on Cleveland's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian art, the museum houses a diverse permanent collection of more than 43,000...

, 2010-) and Thomas P. Campbell

Thomas P. Campbell

Thomas P. Campbell, Ph.D. , is the ninth director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. After fourteen years as a curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, specializing in tapestries, he was elected Director and CEO on September 9, 2008...

 (Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

, 2009–). Art historians of note who have trained there include the Renaissance specialist John Shearman

John Shearman

John Kinder Gowran Shearman was an English art historian who also taught in America. He was a specialist in Italian Renaissance painting, regarded by many as "the outstanding figure" of his generation in this area, who published several influential works, but whose expected major books on...

, Marxist art historian T. J. Clark

T. J. Clark (historian)

Timothy James Clark often known as T.J. Clark, is an art historian and writer, born in 1943 in Bristol, England.-Life and work:Clark attended Bristol Grammar School. He completed his undergraduate studies at St. John's College, Cambridge University, he obtained a first-class honours degree in 1964....

 and the feminist art historian Griselda Pollock

Griselda Pollock

Griselda Pollock is a prominent art historian and cultural analyst, and a world-renowned scholar of international, post-colonial feminist studies in the visual arts. She is best known for her theoretical and methodological innovation, combined with deeply engaged readings of historical and...

. William J. R. Curtis

William J. R. Curtis

William J. R. Curtis is an important architectural historian whose writings have focused on twentieth century architecture...

, architectural historian and author of Modern Architecture Since 1900, is also a notable alumnus. The critics Reyner Banham

Reyner Banham

Peter Reyner Banham was a prolific architectural critic and writer best known for his 1960 theoretical treatise Theory and Design in the First Machine Age and for his 1971 book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies...

, Brian Sewell

Brian Sewell

Brian Sewell is an English art critic and media personality. He writes for the London Evening Standard and is noted for artistic conservatism and his acerbic view of the Turner Prize and conceptual art...

, Andrew Graham-Dixon

Andrew Graham-Dixon

Andrew Michael Graham-Dixon is a British art historian and broadcaster.-Education:Graham-Dixon was educated at the independent Westminster School and at Christ Church at the University of Oxford, where he read English...

 and Tim Marlow

Tim Marlow

Tim Marlow is a British writer, broadcaster and art historian. He is best known for his regular feature on Channel Five - Tim Marlow on..., an occasional series in which he looks at current art exhibitions. He has also had several other art programs, radio programs and publications...

 are also graduates of the Courtauld, as are the artists Jeremy Deller

Jeremy Deller

Jeremy Deller is an English conceptual, video and installation artist. He is a Turner Prize winner.Deller is best-known for his Battle of Orgreave , a reenactment of the actual Battle of Orgreave which occurred during the UK miners' strike in 1984.-Life and work:Jeremy Deller was born in London,...

 (winner of the 2004 Turner Prize

Turner Prize

The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...

) and Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall

Jeffrey "Jeff" Wall, OC, RSA is a Canadian artist best known for his large-scale back-lit cibachrome photographs and art-historical writing. Wall has been a key figure in Vancouver's art scene since the early-1970s...

. Writers who have studied there include the Booker Prize-winning Anita Brookner

Anita Brookner

Anita Brookner CBE is an English language novelist and art historian who was born in Herne Hill, a suburb of London.-Early life and education:...

, the novelist Iain Sinclair

Iain Sinclair

Iain Sinclair FRSL is a British writer and filmmaker. Much of his work is rooted in London, most recently within the influences of psychogeography.-Life and work:...

, and the travel writer Michael Jacobs

Michael Jacobs (writer)

Michael Jacobs is a writer of Irish/Italian ancestry with particular interest in Travel, History of Art, Spain, Latin America and Gastronomy...

. The horror film star Vincent Price

Vincent Price

Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.-Early life and career:Price was born in St...

 was also an alumnus.

Directors

William George Constable William George Constable William George Constable William George Constable William George Constable (born Derby, England, 27 October 1887, died Cambridge, Massachusetts, 3 February 1976, was an art historian and gallery director.-Education:...	1932–1936
T. S. R. Boase	1936–1947
Anthony Blunt Anthony Blunt Anthony Frederick Blunt , was a British art historian who was exposed as a Soviet spy late in his life.Blunt was Professor of the History of Art at the University of London, director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, Surveyor of the King's Pictures and London...	1947–1974
Peter Lasko	1974–1985
Michael Kauffmann	1985–1995
Eric Fernie Eric Fernie Eric Campbell Fernie is a Scottish art historian.-Education:Fernie was educated at the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of London .-Career:...	1995–2003
James Cuno	2003–2004
Deborah Swallow	2004–

External links

• Official website of the Courtauld Institute of Art