One of the most charming small art collections in the country, the Barber, is usually tucked away in Edgbaston, a bus ride from Birmingham train station, so we should rejoice that some of its choicest pieces are now in London while its university home is being refurbished.
It’s in the Courtauld, whose collection Samuel Courtauld set up in 1932 from his own acquisitions, the same year as Lady Barber established her endowment. Both are examples of the good effects of intelligent private philanthropy on the arts. The 18 pictures look altogether at home here, so much so that the moving Van Dyke Ecce Homo (a change from the usual grandiose royals and nobles) is positioned right next to the Courtauld’s own Van Dyke on the same subject of the suffering Christ.
Most of the rest are in a separate space. But taken as a whole, what a splendid and various group it is: a selection box without any duds. There’s a wonderful Bellini of St Jerome in the Wilderness which manages to include, notwithstanding the subject, the Venetian Renaissance attributes of an enchanting landscape in the background and some vivid colour. Plus a nice lion, whom the saint is preaching to, prior to taking out a thorn from his paw.
The painting that draws the viewer most is probably the Jans Gossart of Hercules and Deianira (Mrs Hercules) – he has put down his club for an embrace of the wife, whose alabaster skin is luminous. But when it comes to enchanting females, the woman on woman portrait of the Russian Countess Golovine by Elisaabeth Vigee LeBrun – on the run from the French Revolution - is simply captivating, what with the vivid scarlet jacket and the sparkling eyes.
The Franz Hals Portrait of a Man holding a Skull is interesting for being an early work, and for that memento mori which you don’t usually get with his solid citizens later. The Rubens is unusual too, showing the bucolic environment in which he retired with his young wife.
But you don’t get more bucolic than the serene Pastroal Landscape of Claude Lorrain, though the Thomas Gainsborough Harvest Wagon runs it close. The Pre-Raphaelites, of which the Barber has choice specimens, is represented by Rossetti’s Blue Bower, setting off Fanny Cornforth’s red hair with a harmony of vivid blue and green.
The Monet is rather un-Monet, being a dramatic landscape that’s more German Romantic than his usual, The Degas is Jockeys before a Race with the scene dramatically sliced in two by the starting post; it’s a curious but effective mixture of oils, thinned down, and pastel on paper. And then there’s Whistler’s Symphony in White III, a white backdrop for his Irish mistress, Joanna Hiffernan, with her red hair, lounging meditatively.
The only flaw, really, in this excellent selection is the occasionally preachy tone of the labels; aren’t we over sermonising about colonialism? But no matter; get down to the Strand when you can to catch these wonderful pictures. And the good news is, we’ve got them until next February.
The Barber in London: Highlights from a Remarkable Collection 23 May 2025 – 22 February 2026 The Courtauld Gallery
