John Lowden

In 1966 Mark Gambier Parry bequeathed to the Courtauld Gallery the art collection formed by his grandfather Thomas Gambier Parry, who died in 1888. In addition to important paintings, Renaissance glass and ceramics, and Islamic metalwork, this included 28 medieval and Renaissance ivories. Since 1967 about half of the ivories have been on permanent display at The Courtauld, yet they have remained largely unknown, even to experts. This catalogue is the first publication dedicated solely to the collection. There are examples of the highest quality of ivory carving, both secular and religious in content, and a number of the objects are of outstanding interest. They are a revealing tribute to the perceptive eye of Thomas Gambier Parry, a distinguished Victorian collector and Gothic Revival artist responsible for a number of richly painted church interiors in England, such as the Eastern part of the nave ceiling, and the octagon, at Ely Cathedral. The earliest objects in date, probably late 11th century, are the group of walrus ivory plaquettes set into the sides and lids of a casket, portraying the Apostles and Christ in Majesty surrounded by the symbols of the Evangelists. The style leaves little doubt that they should be associated with a group of portable altars at Kloster Melk in Austria. A gap of some two centuries separates the casket panels from the next important object – the central portion of an ivory triptych, containing a Deesis group of Christ enthroned between angels holding instruments of the Passion in the upper register, and the Virgin and Child between candle-bearing angels below. The style of the ivory relates it securely to the atelier of the Soissons Diptych in the Victoria & Albert Museum. The Gambier-Parry fragment employs bold cutting of the frame to accentuate the three-dimensional quantities of the relief. Somewhat later in date, towards the middle of the 14th century, is a complete diptych of the Crucifixion and Virgin with angels, the faces of which Gambier-Parry described as “worthy of Luini”. The extraordinary foreshortening of the swooning Virgin’s head can happily be paralleled to a diptych in the Schoolmeesters Collection, Liège, by the “aterlie aux visages caractérisés”, as named by Raymond Koechlin. The Gambier- Parry diptych, must rank with the finest productions of the workshop.

The Thomson Collection contains examples of the highest quality of most types of medieval ivory carving, both secular and religious. These include large statuettes of the Virgin and Child intended to stand on altars in chapels, small versions for private use in the home, and folding tablets or diptychs with scenes from the life of Christ carved in relief.

Impressionism took its name from the title of a painting that Claude Monet (1840-1926) exhibited in 1874. More than any other artist, Monet was the creator of the Impressionist vision, which has so forcefully shaped the way in which he habitually see nature today. For sixty years he continuously explored ways of translating his experiences into paint, in pictures that take us from the bustling life of Paris in the 1860s to the seclusion of his own water-garden, which he painted in his last years.John House’s introduction to Monet’s life and work presents a sequence of dazzling illustrations that chart the artist’s progress as he became increasingly preoccupied with colour and atmospheric effect, and the direct studies of nature gave way to paintings of greater richness and harmony, in which the play of varied colours replaced the conventional drawing and modelling of forms.