Collecting Impressionism: Samuel Courtauld, Oskar Reinhart and other early collectors of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings

Speakers

Dr Katja Baumhoff is Deputy Director of the Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’, Winterthur. Katja read English and Art History in Düsseldorf, Naples and Reading. Her PhD thesis on Early American Modernism was completed at the Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf. She was a visiting scholar at the Department of Art History at Yale University, New Haven. Before taking up her current role she was an independent curator for numerous international projects and the artistic head of Shed in Frauenfeld, Switzeraland.

Dr Natalia Murray is a Lecturer in Modern Art and Curating at The Courtauld and an independent curator. She specialises in Russian and European art from the 19th and 20th centuries. Natalia has curated several major exhibitions, including Revolution. Russian Art. 1917-1932 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London (2017) and The World as Objectlessness at the Jewish Museum in Moscow (2022). Her published works include Two Women Patrons of the Russian Avant-Garde (2021) and Art for the Workers (2018). In addition to her academic and curatorial work, Natalia contributes to media projects, including BBC programmes, and serves as a trustee of The Avant-Garde Art Research Project, a charity dedicated to promoting understanding of avant-garde art and combating forgeries in the art market.

Dr Tom Stammers is Reader in Art and Cultural History at The Courtauld. He is a cultural historian of modern France and modern Europe, having taught previously in Cambridge, Paris and Durham. His first book, the Purchase of the Past: The Culture of Collecting in Post-Revolutionary Paris (c.1790-1890), won the 2021 Gladstone Prize from The Royal Historical Society. He was co-investigator on the major AHRC-funded project Jewish Country Houses: Objects, Networks, People (2019-2024), the outputs from which include two forthcoming volumes on Jewish dealers  and Jewish collectors in modern Europe (both co-edited with Silvia Davoli). He has published widely on the history of collecting, the art market, museums, connoisseurship, the historiography of art and the material legacies of the French Revolution; he is also a regular contributor to arts magazines such as Apollo and the London Review of Books. Through research, public events and exhibitions he has frequently collaborated with a heritage institutions in Britain and Europe.

Dr MaryAnne Stevens is an independent art historian and curator, specialising in 18th- to early 20th-century art. Formerly Director of Academic Affairs at the Royal Academy of Arts, she played a key role in establishing the Learning Department, enhancing the Collections, Library, and Archive, and served as Acting Secretary from 2005 to 2007. MaryAnne has published widely and curated numerous major international exhibitions, including Sir John Soane: Master of Space and Light (1999–2000), Palladio (2008–09), Building the Revolution: Russian Constructivist Art and Architecture (2012), and After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art (2023). She is a Board member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, sits on the Scientific Committee of the Marcello Project (Fribourg), and consults for the Sparebankstiftelsen DNB in Norway.

Dr Barnaby Wright is Deputy Head of the Courtauld Gallery and Daniel Katz Curator of 20th Century Art. He is a specialist in late nineteenth-century and twentieth-century art with a particular interest in modern British art. He studied at The Courtauld (BA, MA, Ph.D., 1996-2004) and began his curatorial career in 2005 as Exhibitions Curator at the Hermitage Rooms in Somerset House, London, where he staged a number of exhibitions in collaboration with The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. Barnaby became a curator at the Courtauld Gallery in 2007 and has curated and co-curated a series of exhibitions including: Walter Sickert: The Camden Town Nudes (2007-08); Frank Auerbach: London Building Sites 1952-62 (2009-10); Cezanne’s Card Players (2010-11, second venue The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); Mondrian-Nicholson: In Parallel (2012); Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901 (2013); Egon Schiele: The Radical Nude (2014-15); Soutine’s Portraits: Cooks, Waiters and Bellboys (2017-18). He has also curated and co-curated a number of shows with contemporary artists at The Courtauld: Richard Serra: Drawings for the Courtauld (2013); Jasper Johns: Regrets (2014); Bridget Riley: Learning from Seurat (2015); Peter Doig (2023); Claudette Johnson: Presence (2023); and The Frank Auerbach: Charcoal Heads (2024).