Alastair Sooke explains how textile magnate Samuel Courtauld

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In 1922, the prodigiously wealthy textile manufacturer SamuelCourtauld visited an exhibition of 19th-century French art at theBurlington Fine Arts Club in London and saw a painting of theProvençal landscape by Cézanne that changed his life."At that moment I felt the magic," he recalled, "and I have felt itin Cézanne's work ever since."

He lost no time in trying to acquire a painting by Cézanne,even though the French artist was then viewed with great scepticismby the art establishment in this country: Mountains in Provence,which so moved Courtauld in 1922, had been rejected by the TateGallery the previous year, while the National Gallery's director,CJ Holmes, refused to buy some of the artist's work for the nationin 1918.

In 1923, Courtauld bought his first painting by Cézanne, alate still life dominated by a plaster cast of a Cupid, which hehad spotted at an exhibition at Agnew's gallery in London's OldBond Street. Over the next decade, he bought at least one work byCézanne each year, including 10 more major oil paintings, aswell as several important drawings and watercolours.

These formed the cornerstone of his extensive collection of FrenchImpressionist and Post-Impressionist art, which also includedmasterpieces by Manet, Monet, Renoir and Gauguin. La MontagneSainte-Victoire, Cézanne's monumental 1887 canvas of themountain that loomed over his birthplace of Aix-en-Provence insouthern France, hung in pride of place above the fireplace of theresplendent Music Room in Courtauld's London residence, Home House.It was his most expensive Cézanne purchase, bought in 1925for £14,250.

Many of these Cézannes were included in his founding gift toestablish the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1932. These works,along with nine moving letters written towards the end ofCézanne's life to the younger painter Emile Bernard, will beshown together for the first time at the Courtauld on Thursday, aspart of the gallery's continuing 75th-anniversary celebrations.