student working in the IT room

The Book Library


Our newly-refurbished Book Library is housed in the vaulted basement of Somerset House in a striking architectural conversion. The Book Library provides access to a significant art historical collection at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels and is one of the major international research collections of art-historical books, periodicals and exhibition catalogues in the country, currently numbering some 180,000 volumes.

There is an online catalogue which can be accessed from terminals in the Library and also via the internet. In addition to using the collection held at the Courtauld students are encouraged to make use of the University of London Library at Senate House and are able to use other important specialist libraries in London including those of major museums, galleries and other cultural institutions.

Image Libraries


Conway Library

The Conway Library holds photographs of architecture, architectural drawings, sculpture and illuminated manuscripts. Covering the period from approximately the fifth century B.C. to the present there are also sections devoted to metalwork, ivories, coins and medals, stained glass, panel and wall painting.

Witt Library
The collection held by the Witt Library includes photographs and reproductions of Western paintings, drawings and engravings from c. 1200 to the present day. The collection now numbers in excess of 1.8 million items with over 66,000 artists represented.

Slide Library
The collection contains more than 200,000 slides covering a range of subjects from painting, sculpture and architecture to illuminated manuscripts, prints and decorative arts.

The Slide Library collection also includes videos of art historical interest, including films about individual artists, techniques and museums as well as feature films with art historical themes.

A programme of digitisation is well advanced, giving students access to high-quality digital images for research.

Art & Architecture
More than 41,000 digital images comprising The Courtauld's collections of paintings and drawings, and more than 33,000 photographs of world architecture and sculpture are available alongside commentaries by current and ex-students and public figures at the Courtauld’s Lottery-funded Web site.

it centre


The IT Centre provides networked computers for student use. It offers facilities for private study and access to e-mail and the Internet. Scanning and imaging facilities are also available. Wireless access is available in the Student Café and Witt Library.

The Gallery


The Courtauld has a further very special resource – The Courtauld Gallery. The founder of the Institute, Samuel Courtauld, gave a magnificent collection of mainly French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in 1932, which was enhanced by further gifts in the 1930s and a bequest in 1948.

The Samuel Courtauld Collection is world famous and includes such outstanding masterpieces as Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère and a version of his Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, Renoir’s La Loge, a ballet scene by Degas, landscapes by Monet and Pissarro, and a splendid group of eight major works by Cézanne. These include some of Cézanne’s late paintings, including Le Lac d’Annecy, one of his series of Card Players, and a late watercolour Still Life.

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Cherry Orchard by Van Gogh, Gauguin’s Nevermore and Te Rerioa, as well as important paintings by Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec and Modigliani, give a further idea of the scope and quality of this collection.

Following Roger Fry’s death in 1934, the Institute received his collection of twentieth-century pictures, works of art from the Omega Workshop and examples of non-Western objects of aesthetic interest. Further bequests were added after the Second World War, principally the Old Master paintings formerly belonging to Viscount Lee of Fareham including Rubens’ Descent from the Cross and Cranach’s Adam and Eve. In 1966, Mark Gambier-Parry bequeathed the collection formed by his grandfather consisting primarily of Italian paintings of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, but also including medieval ivories and enamels, majolica, German and Italian glass and Islamic metalwork. In 1967, a bequest of fine British watercolours was received from William Spooner which complemented the important collection of Old Master and British drawings bequeathed in 1952 by Sir Robert Witt, one of the Institute’s outstanding benefactors. In 1974 a magnificent group of thirteen watercolours by Turner was presented in memory of Sir Stephen Courtauld.

In 1978 there followed the bequest of the superb collection of Old Master paintings and drawings formed by Count Antonie Seilern and known as the Princes Gate Collection. This rivals the Samuel Courtauld Collection in splendour and is particularly strong in the works of Rubens. There are also major works by Bernardo Daddi, the Master of Flémalle, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Quentin Massys, Van Dyck, G.B. Tiepolo, and a group of nineteenth- and twentieth-century works by Pissarro, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne and Kokoschka.

More recently, two collections of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century paintings, drawings and sculptures, mainly by British artists, have been given or bequeathed by Miss Lillian Browse and Dr Alastair Hunter.

Students may also consult the extensive collection of prints and drawings, including old master drawings, in the Prints and Drawings Study Room. The drawings collection reflects our emphasis on North European art of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The Courtauld Gallery is open to the public Monday to Sunday from 10am to 6pm daily. Entry is free to Courtauld students.