Art historian Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen welcomes his top five attractions back to the refurbished exhibition space
A coterie of the best-known faces in art has returned to the banks of the Thames, ready for public scrutiny this month. Paul Cézanne’s card players have been in Norway, while a bandaged Vincent van Gogh has been visiting Amsterdam. Claude Monet’s image of a sun-drenched tree on a beach in Antibes took a summer trip to Hull.
Now back home together, they are hanging in the Courtauld Gallery in Somerset House, on the Strand in central London, after a three-year refurbishment that has let in light and created space. The building work, estimated to have cost about £57m, including arranging the loan of exhibits to other galleries, has brought the large first-floor Great Room, the setting for Britain’s first Royal Academy summer exhibitions, between 1780 and 1836, back to its original stately grandeur.
