Explore paintings in the National Galley Collection once owned by painters – from Freud to Van Dyck
Freud and Corot
Lucian Freud (1922–2011) bought Corot’s Italian Woman at auction in 2001, and for the last decade of his life, it hung above the fireplace in the drawing room of his Kensington home. In the same room, he kept paintings by Constable, Frank Auerbach, and a bronze by Degas. Freud lived surrounded by art, and as he got older and more successful, he acquired more works for himself.
The paintings Freud owned reflected his lifelong interest in past masters, as well as his acquaintances and friendships, for instance with Auerbach. He selected works that had a deep personal or emotional significance for him, or that resonated with his own work.
Freud was known for his probing and intensely observed nudes and portraits, and his acquisition of a figure painting by Corot reflects his own artistic focus on the human body. Though best known for his landscapes, Corot painted hundreds of figures in his later years, many of them lone, contemplative female figures. Dressed in regional Italian dress, this woman is given solidity and presence through Corot’s pronounced lighting and thick, robust brushwork, which find an echo in Freud’s own technique.
When Freud died in 2011, he left the painting to the nation as a thank-you gesture to Britain for welcoming his Jewish family in 1933; they fled Berlin to escape the rise of Nazism in Germany when he was just 11. Freud went on to become one of Britain’s leading painters.
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, ‘Italian Woman, or Woman with Yellow Sleeve (L'Italienne)', about 1870
Matisse and Degas
In Combing the Hair ('La Coiffure') Degas captures a quiet domestic scene with the technical audacity typical of his late years, with warm hues and the forms outlined in thick black lines. Degas kept the painting until his death in 1917, and by the 1920s, it was owned by Matisse.
Matisse began collecting art early in his career, before he could really afford to. He paid for his first painting, by Cézanne, in installments; he even allegedly pawned his wife’s ring and used her dowry to be able to make his first purchases. As well as acquiring paintings by his contemporaries and 19th-century masters, he also amassed an eclectic collection that ranged from rugs, fabrics, and African artefacts. While the objects served as a library of motifs, the paintings provided inspiration for his pictorial and sculptural practices.
As both a colourist and draughtsman, Matisse initiated some of the most groundbreaking developments of the 20th century. Degas’s radiant palette finds echoes in Matisse’s colours and, in particular, his distinctive use of red. The subject too resonated with Matisse. Around the time that he acquired this painting, he was increasingly drawn to the subject of lone women in light-filled interiors, often lost in thought and seemingly unaware of being observed.
As Matisse’s taste evolved, he parted with pictures in order to acquire others, or sold works when he needed money. He kept Degas’s painting for at least 16 years, selling it in 1937 via his son Pierre, an art dealer in New York, to Sir Kenneth Clark, then Director of the National Gallery, where it joined the Gallery’s growing collection of late 19th-century French art.
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, ‘Combing the Hair ('La Coiffure’)’, about 1896
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Degas and Manet
Manet painted The Execution of Maximilian in response to an acute political crisis. The Austrian Archduke Maximilian had been imposed by Napoleon III as puppet emperor of Mexico, and was executed in 1867 when French troops withdrew. It was a huge scandal in France, and Manet – never one to shy away from controversy – immediately painted the subject.
He completed four versions of the composition. This one remained in his studio at his death in 1883. Having suffered damage, it was cut into pieces by his son and sold separately. Over the successive years, Manet’s great friend Degas went to great effort to retrieve the various fragments and found four, reassembling them onto a single canvas.
Degas’s determination was driven by both personal and artistic motivations. As a collector, he sought out works by the 19th-century masters he most admired, Ingres and Delacroix, and often supported less affluent members of the Impressionist group by buying their works. But he acquired works by Manet, who was from a similar affluent bourgeois background to his own, out of both friendship and admiration. He thought this controversial painting had special importance, and kept it until his death in 1917.
The following year, it was bought by the National Gallery at one of the posthumous sales of Degas’s collection, where the hundreds of paintings and drawings that he had amassed during his life were sold. At the time, the National Gallery was just starting to acquire modern French paintings, and this became one of the first works of modern art to enter the Gallery’s collection.
Edouard Manet, ‘The Execution of Maximilian’, about 1867-8
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Leighton and Corot
Corot’s four panels, The Four Times of Day, depict the day unfolding from the glowing morning light to the full midday sun and finally the subdued effects of moonlight. Corot painted the panels for his friend and fellow artist Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (1803–1860), to decorate the walls of his studio in the French town of Fontainebleau. Completed in a single week, they demonstrate Corot’s impressive skill at capturing different qualities of light and integrating four images into a unified scheme.
The four paintings were once owned by Frederic, Lord Leighton, a leading figure of the Victorian art world, celebrated for his paintings and sculptures, and from 1878, President of the Royal Academy of Arts. Leighton was among the first British collectors of Corot’s work, which he acquired alongside a magnificent array of objects ranging from Middle Eastern pottery, rugs, and tapestries to Renaissance paintings and master drawings.
Aware of art’s power to convey status and prestige, Leighton displayed these items prominently in the sumptuous house he had built for himself in Holland Park, West London. He purchased Corot’s paintings in 1865, the year that construction began on the house. The panels were likely to have been incorporated into the architectural scheme from its conception, and held pride of place in the ground-floor drawing room, alerting his visitors to his refined taste and cosmopolitan background.
The paintings were acquired by the National Gallery in 2014.
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