Peak perspective

Globe-trotting artist Peter Doig is on the brink of a new frontier, with a show that puts his work alongside venerated modern masters

- Stuart Jeffries

"IT COULD BE A MASSIVE FAILURE,” says Peter Doig with a laugh. The 63-year-old painter is worrying about his looming show at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Only very rarely is a living artist deemed worthy of having their works hang alongside the esteemed London gallery’s Cézannes, Gauguins, Manets, Monets and Renoirs.

“I know Frank Auerbach showed his building site paintings there,” adds the Scottish-born artist. True, but that was 13 years ago. Since the Courtauld reopened, after a £57m ($69m) revamp in late 2021, its temporary exhibition space has exclusively hosted blockbuster shows by dead artists. First Van Gogh, then Edvard Munch and most recently Henry Fuseli. Doig will be the first living artist to exhibit there. No pressure then.

Perhaps he shouldn’t worry. After all, say what you like about Van Gogh, Munch and Fuseli, not one of their paintings sold for £5.7m at auction while they were alive. This happened in 2007 when Doig’s painting White Canoe, which was expected to fetch £1m, went for a sum that made Doig, for a while, Europe’s most expensive living painter. Not that he saw the proceeds: the painting belonged to Charles Saatchi. To Doig, the sale seemed a symptom of an art market gone mad, yet it helped establish his reputation.

The jeopardy is ramped up further because Doig, an inveterate deadline surfer, hasn’t finished the paintings for the show. At his home-cum-studio in east London, he coughs and splutters his way through the interview, and looks as shattered as anyone who has been up working until 4am would be. He dispatched his second wife, Parinaz Mogadassi, and their three young children on a trip to Paris, so that he could better focus on the eight to 10 paintings he plans to exhibit.