What's On in 2021, Assuming Galleries Reopen....

So, 2021. What will we be able to see, where will be able to go? We're making no plans, but we're nevertheless looking forward to some interesting exhibitions across Britain and Europe in the coming 12 months. There are plenty of big names -- Botticelli, Rembrandt, Titian and Vermeer among them -- though with galleries closed yet again across much of the continent as 2020 ends and lockdowns tighten, we're only too aware of the huge coronavirus-shaped cloud of uncertainty hanging over the calendar. 

Just under half of the 30 or so exhibitions we highlighted in our 2020 preview were either postponed till this year or later, if not cancelled altogether. In a spirit of vaccine-fuelled optimism and with fingers firmly crossed, here's a selection of key shows for your diary, in more or less chronological order.

January 

What more hopeful way to start the year than with a picture of a summer evening by the sea? It's by Peder Severin Krøyer, one of the leaders of the artists' colony at Skagen on the northern tip of Denmark, and it depicts his wife and his fellow Skagen painter, Anna Ancher. While we've got a bit of a weakness for Danish art, Krøyer also won much acclaim in Paris in the 1880s. The Blue Hour of Peder Severin Krøyer is on at the Musée Marmottan Monet in the French capital from January 28 to July 25. A version of this exhibition will be shown in Skagen in 2022. 

London's first big show of 2021 is Francis Bacon: Man and Beast, starting at the Royal Academy on January 30. The exhibition looks at Bacon's career-long fascination with animals and how it shaped his approach to the human body, including some of his earliest works and his last-ever painting. Until April 18. 

February

Followers of the art writer and critic Waldemar Januszczak will know he's just a little bit obsessed with the story of Mary Magdalene, the follower of Christ whose story has been a source of inspiration to artists down the centuries, as a sinner, a sex object or a feminist icon. The exhibition Waldemar's surely been waiting for opens at the Catharijneconvent in Utrecht on February 19, looking at Mary Magdalene from all sides, and runs until August 29.  

In Paris, the Fondation Louis Vuitton offers the first chance outside Russia to see a collection of French and Russian modern art acquired over a century ago by the Morozov brothers of Moscow. Monet, Renoir, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Chagall all feature in this show. The Morozov Collection: Icons of Modern Art is on from February 24 to July 25. 

There's five centuries of art history and royal history on the menu at the National Maritime Museum in London from February 26 to October 31, in an exhibition postponed from 2020. Tudors to Windsors: British Royal Portraits looks at how artists including Holbein and Van Dyck shaped the image of the monarchy for public consumption. Many of the works on show are from the National Portrait Gallery, currently being refurbished. 

March 

The National Gallery in London also takes us back to the early 16th century for the first major exhibition in the UK about that icon of German Renaissance art, Albrecht Dürer, in nearly 20 years. Dürer's Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist focuses on his trips from his home in Nuremberg to Italy and the Low Countries and the exchange of ideas between North and South they produced. From March 6 to June 13, after which the show moves on to Aachen, one of the great artist's stops on his travels 500 years ago. 

At the Royal Academy, March 27 sees the appropriately named The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020, David Hockney's record of the natural world during last year's first lockdown, captured in 116 works created on his iPad at his home in northern France. On until August 22. 

April

With spring in the air, the Musée des Impressionismes at Giverny takes a look at what gardens meant to the Impressionists and the Nabis. The Garden from Monet to Bonnard will feature about 100 works, with Pissarro and Denis also among those represented. April 1 to November 1. 

More Impressionism is due on show at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris from April 13 to August 1 (details are not yet on the museum's website). Impressionist Decorations: The Birth of Modern Decor, which will be transferring to the National Gallery in London later in the year, will bring together objects such as decorative panels, tapestries and ceramics by artists such as Monet, Degas and Caillebotte. 

The assassination of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, 850 years ago by knights loyal to King Henry II was a crime that shook the Middle Ages and has fascinated down the centuries. The British Museum is devoting an exhibition to the murder in Canterbury Cathedral and the legends that grew to surround it from April 22 to August 22. Thomas Becket: Murder and the Making of a Saint features medieval stained glass, jewellery and reliquaries. 

The expressiveness of Auguste Rodin's sculptures, such as The Thinker and The Burghers of Calais, broke new ground at the end of the 19th century. A show organised in conjunction with the Musée Rodin in Paris begins at Tate Modern in London on April 29. The Making of Rodin features more than 200 works, many not previously seen outside France, and runs until October 31. 

May 

One of the leading lights of Pointillism was not French, but Belgian, and he'll be celebrated in 2021 in an exhibition at Museum Singer Laren, near Hilversum in the Netherlands. Théo van Rysselberghe: Painter of the Sun runs from May 4 to September 19. 

The largest exhibition devoted to the sculptor Barbara Hepworth since she died in 1975 will mark the 10th anniversary of the museum that bears her name in her home town of Wakefield. Barbara Hepworth: Art and Life will include some of her most celebrated works as well as a selection of 1960s art by Bridget Riley. May 21 to October 31. 

And more history at the British Museum. Did Emperor Nero fiddle while Rome burned? The last male descendant of Augustus ascended the throne at 16 and five years later murdered his mother. His behaviour led the Senate to excise his name from the official records. This show is due to run from May 27 to October 24, though details are yet to be published on the museum's website. 

June

It's not very often that you get the chance to see 10 paintings by Johannes Vermeer together at one time, but Vermeer at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden from June 4 offers just such an opportunity. This show centres on the restoration of Dresden's own Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, which has revealed the presence of a painting-within-a-painting instead of the previously blank wall behind the girl. There are some 50 other Dutch genre paintings on display as well, from de Hooch, Terborch and more. Until September 12. 

July 

If you were wondering why Dürer was in Aachen in 1520, it was for the coronation of Charles V in the city's remarkable cathedral. Dürer Was Here at the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum should have been on in 2020, of course, but who was expecting pestilence to spread across the continent? The new dates are July 18 to October 24. 

September

A generation before Dürer, Sandro Botticelli was creating his unmistakable paintings, but the details of his life remain a bit of a mystery. The Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris will assemble around 40 works from the master of the Florentine Renaissance, as well as paintings by his contemporaries, for an exhibition from September 10 to January 24, 2022. Hopefully, social distancing will be a thing of the past by then, because this really is quite a cramped venue....

The Impressionist Decorations show is due to transfer from Paris to the National Gallery in London on September 11, running through to January 9, 2022.

Most spectacular and hyped artwork of the year? A strong contender will be in the centre of Paris when the late Christo and Jeanne-Claude's plans to envelop the Arc de Triomphe in 25,000 square metres of recyclable fabric, hatched over many decades, are finally realised. The couple who wrapped the Reichstag must have found doing their Christmas presents a doddle. L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped is scheduled to draw the crowds from September 18 to October 3. 

That enigmatic portrait by Frans Hals, The Laughing Cavalier, has never been loaned out from the Wallace Collection in London, so you've never had the chance to see it together with other works by the Golden Age painter. Until now. Frans Hals: The Male Portrait will bring a choice selection of similar canvases by him to the Wallace from September 22 to January 30, 2022. 

October

More Dutch Golden Age at the Dordrechts Museum. Dordrecht's most famous painter is Aelbert Cuyp, the 400th anniversary of whose birth occurred in 2020. In the Light of Cuyp will assemble 35 of his most important paintings and examine the influence of those light-bathed pastoral scenes on English landscape artists including Gainsborough, Constable and Turner. October 3 to March 6, 2022. This show was postponed from 2020, as were the next two on our list:

Becoming Rembrandt at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt looks at Rembrandt's rise to international fame in the years between 1630 and 1655, with lots of major loans promised. This show now runs from October 6 to January 30, 2022. 

One of the biggest exhibitions ever staged outside Spain about Francisco de Goya opens at the Fondation Beyeler near Basel on October 10. Running until January 23, 2022, the show will include more than 70 paintings, some from Spanish private collections that are rarely exhibited.

November

William Hogarth -- now there's a thoroughly British artist for you. But just as Hogarth captured the spirit of modern life in Britain in the 18th century, painters like Guardi and Chardin were creating work in a similar vein but in their own fashion on the Continent. See them all in Hogarth and Europe at Tate Britain from November 3 to March 20, 2022. 

The last of our three exhibitions at the British Museum in 2021 is Ancient Peru, looking at the various peoples who lived in the country from 2000 BC until the Inca Empire was decimated by the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century. Scheduled to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Peru's independence, this show will feature many loan artefacts and will run from November 11 to February 20, 2022. Details aren't yet available on the museum's website. 

Finally, a Titian show delayed from 2020 is due to open at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in autumn 2021; we don't have dates yet. Titian's Vision of Women: Beauty -- Love -- Poetry will feature 60 paintings on loan from international collections and look at how women are depicted not only in Titian's work but also that of his contemporaries, including Tintoretto, Veronese and Lorenzo Lotto. This exhibition will be on at the Palazzo Reale in Milan after Vienna. 

Images

Peder Severin Krøyer, Summer Evening on Skagen Sønderstrand, 1893, Skagens Kunstmuseer, Skagen, Denmark. © Skagens Kunstmuseer 
Jean-Auguste Renoir, Portrait of Jeanne Samary, 1877, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. © Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

Edouard Manet, Jeanne (Spring), 1881, The J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. © The J Paul Getty Museum

Johannes Vermeer, Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, c. 1659, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden (intermediate state of restoration on January 16, 2020). © SKD, Photo: Wolfgang Kreische

Sandro Botticelli, Portrait of Giuliano de Medici, 1478-80, Fondazione Accademia Carrara, Bergamo. © Fondazione Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

Francisco de Goya, Doña María del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva Álvarez de Toledo, 13th Duchess of Alba, 1795, Fundación Casa de Alba, Palacio de Liria, Madrid

William Hogarth, A Scene from ‘The Beggar’s Opera’ VI, 1731, Tate, London