Enjoying festive jewels at the newly refurbished London gallery

Since it was founded 90 years ago, the Courtauld Gallery has been famous for its world-class collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, cleverly snapped up by the far-sighted Samuel Courtauld at a time when such things were considered too ­“modern” for the National Gallery.

But the Courtauld is in fact a collection of collections, uniting gifts and bequests made over the years by a number of donors, from the institution’s co-founder Viscount Lee of Fareham – who on his death in 1947 left the gallery Botticelli’s magnificent Trinity altarpiece – to Count Antoine Seilern, whose major bequest in 1978 included Rubens’ ­heart-breaking studies for Descent from the Cross and The Entombment.

But the least celebrated contributor to the Courtauld’s holdings is the Victorian high churchman and philanthropist Thomas Gambier Parry, whose collection of over 300 paintings and decorative objects – all now viewable on the gallery website – came to the institution in 1966 after the death of his grandson Mark.