A new display, Modern Painting from the Courtauld and Reuben Collections, made possible by the long-term partnership between the Courtauld and the Reuben Foundation, will open at the Courtauld Gallery on 18 September 2026.
Featuring outstanding works by Cezanne, Modigliani, Léger, Picasso, and Magritte, the display explores radical new approaches to painting in the first half of the 20th century.
The Courtauld’s partnership with the Reuben Foundation, launched in 2025, enables works of art from the Reuben Collection to be made available to the public as part of the Courtauld Gallery’s displays. It allows the Gallery to extend its celebrated presentation of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art into the modern period.
In October 2025, the Courtauld announced the largest financial gift in its history from the Reuben Foundation, echoing the extraordinary philanthropy of the Courtauld’s founder, Samuel Courtauld. The Foundation is supporting the development of the Courtauld’s new Strand campus, which, when it opens in 2029, will be one of the world’s most important centres for the study of the history of art.
Modern Painting from the Courtauld and Reuben Collections begins with early 20th century paintings from the Courtauld, including Paul Cézanne’s Turning Road (1905), a landscape conjured through near-abstract patches of colour, and Amedeo Modigliani’s Nude (c.1916), a radically direct and expressive painting that upended conventional approaches to the subject of the female nude. These set the stage for works from the Reuben Collection by painters who built on such innovations to chart new artistic directions.
Major Cubist works by Juan Gris and Fernand Léger from 1914-1918, a period of significant avant-garde experimentation in Europe, took Cézanne’s patchwork of brushstrokes to new extremes. They broke the illusion of representational painting by depicting their subjects as fragmented parts, seemingly still in the process of being formed. A highlight of this area of the display is Man Ray’s monumental Black Widow (Nativity), painted in New York in 1915, and last exhibited in the UK more than fifty years ago. Although celebrated as a modernist photographer, Man Ray began his career as a painter. With this, one of his most significant early works, he created an epic modern figure painting out of Cubism and painted collage.
A group of three paintings by Pablo Picasso from the period of the Second World War demonstrate the artist’s continual reinvention of the traditions of painting. Picasso’s two portraits of his partners, Marie-Thérèse Walter, 1937, and the photographer Dora Maar, 1939, neither previously exhibited in this country, challenge and transform classical conventions of portraiture. The latter work offers a raw and unsettling image of Maar during the war. They are shown alongside his remarkable Still Life with Basket of Fruits and Flowers (1942); its spiky and fraught depiction of its humble objects powerfully expressing the tenor of wartime Paris.
The Reuben Collection holds a significant collection of works by the Surrealist artist René Magritte. Some of Magritte’s most famous compositions are included in this display, such as The Dominion of Light and The Intimate Friend. Both works date from the 1950s and are characteristically elusive juxtapositions that offer the promise of new and unexpected meanings, such as a nocturnal scene under a sunlit sky, or the artist’s iconic bowler-hatted man, overlaid with a wine glass and baguette. Magritte’s La Domaine Arnheim, 1949, is a further highlight of this group. Its surreal image of a landscape through a shattered window is an encapsulation of the transformations and reinventions of modern painting since the time of Cézanne.
The Courtauld Gallery has grown historically through the generosity of private individuals who have endowed it with the remarkable collections they formed. This tradition of philanthropy, initiated at the Gallery by Samuel Courtauld in the 1930s, continues to extend and enhance the Courtauld Gallery’s world-famous collections. In recent years, the Courtauld Gallery has also enriched its displays with works of art loaned to it from other collections, including a group of paintings from the Oskar Reinhart Collection and exceptional works from the Barber Institute of Fine Art in Birmingham.
Modern Painting from the Courtauld and Reuben Collections
Opening 18 September 2026
Katja and Nicolai Tangen 20th Century Gallery, Floor 3
Highlights
