The Collection

Sculpture

 

The Courtauld houses a wide-ranging collection of sculpture from antiquity to the 20th century. It includes an outstanding group of small-scale ivory carvings used during medieval times for personal prayer, with the Courtauld’s Passion diptych considered one of the most beautiful of its kind.

Examples of Italian Renaissance sculptural bas-reliefs and 18th- and 19th-century sculpture, such as Gauguin’s only marble portrait of his wife, are displayed throughout the Gallery. An entire room is devoted to Degas’ world-famous sculptural studies of dancers, bathers and horses. The collection continues into the 20th century with works by Frank Dobson, Archipenko, Renoir, Rodin, Matisse, Henry Moore and César.

The Gallery also displays a collection of African and Oceanic wood carvings collected by the Bloomsbury art critic and artist Roger Fry, who was known for his pioneering interest in non-Western, and especially African, art.  A highlight of this collection is the reliquary guardian figure made by the Kota Peoples of Gabon.

Featured movie - Degas' Dancers lunchtime talk: