Opening and Closing in October

There are a tremendous number of exhibitions opening this month, starting in London with Paul Cezanne at Tate Modern. Cezanne's painting revolutionised art at the end of the 19th century, and the Tate is promising us a "once-in-a-generation" show, the first big retrospective in the UK for more than 25 years, with around 80 works, more than 20 of them never before seen in Britain. They include The Basket of Apples from the Chicago Institute of Art, where the previous version of this show earned rave reviews. Cezanne is on in London from October 5 to March 12. 

It's certainly not once in a generation for an exhibition about Lucian Freud, but it is the 100th anniversary of his birth this year, and his seven-decade career is surveyed at the National Gallery. Lucian Freud: New Perspectives will have more than 60 paintings, from early, intimate works to his late monumental fleshy nudes. It runs from October 1 to January 22, before heading to the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid. 

More Freud will be on view at the Garden Museum in Lambeth. Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits from October 14 to March 5 will highlight his depictions of greenery with all its blemishes; a bit like his nudes, perhaps....

Back at the National Gallery, a free exhibition from October 21 to January 15 invites you to Discover Manet & Eva Gonzalès, focusing on Manet's portrait of his only pupil from the museum's own collection. The display will present new research about the two and their relationship. Portraits and self-portraits of other women artists, including Angelica Kauffman and Laura Knight, will place the painting in a broader context. 

There are two new shows at the Courtauld Institute, both starting on October 14. Henry Fuseli and the Modern Woman: Fashion, Fantasy, Fetishism looks at the 18th-century Anglo-Swiss artist's secret obsession with the female figure through 50 of his private drawings, often depicting extravagant clothes and hairstyles. It's on till January 8 before transferring to the Kunsthaus in Zurich. The second exhibition, running until January 29, is Helen Saunders: Modernist Rebel. Saunders was a pioneer of abstract art in Britain and one of only two women members of the short-lived Vorticist movement before World War I. 

Leighton House Museum, the sumptuous home and studio in Kensington of Victorian art superstar Frederic Leighton (creator of Flaming June) reopens after redevelopment on October 15. Artists and Neighbours: The Holland Park Circle looks at the activity of Leighton and other prominent artists such as Albert Moore who lived close by and features newly acquired works. Until March 19.

More Victorian art at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow with The Legend of King Arthur: A Pre-Raphaelite Love Story. The Victorians were fascinated with the Arthurian tales of a dreamlike England in the distant past, and the Pre-Raphs, including Burne-Jones, Millais, Rossetti and Holman Hunt, repeatedly rendered them in paint. The show is on at the north-east London venue from October 14 to January 22, with admission free, before moving to Tullie House in Carlisle in February and Falmouth Art Gallery in Cornwall in June.  

Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt at the British Museum marks 200 years since the deciphering of the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone opened the way to an understanding of one of the greatest of ancient civilisations. This exhibition from October 13 to February 19 traces the efforts needed to decode the script and the revelations that followed.   

Go on, admit it; you've always wanted a Salvador Dalí lobster telephone, haven't you? Not far from Leighton House, this and other weird and wonderful creations will be on show at the Design Museum in Kensington from October 14 in Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924-Today. The exhibition, which runs until February 19, features close to 350 objects, many from the Vitra Design Museum in south-west Germany. 

Gustav Klimt found inspiration in the work of Van Gogh, Monet, Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec and other artists to help create his dazzling pictures. Golden Boy Gustav Klimt (yes, unfortunately that is the title) at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam brings together "dozens of iconic masterpieces" by Klimt with the work of the artists who influenced him. We suspect it may be rather crowded. On in the Netherlands from October 7 to January 8 before transferring to the Belvedere in Vienna. 

The Walter Sickert exhibition at Tate Britain this summer was fascinating and revelatory, from his Victorian music-hall paintings to his late work that prefigured Pop Art. It reopens on October 14 at the Petit Palais in Paris under the title Walter Sickert: Painting and Transgressing, and we recommend it highly. Until January 29. 

At the Louvre, October 12 sees the start of Things: A History of Still Life. There will be contributions from artists as varied as Chardin, van Gogh, Adriaen Coorte and Meret Oppenheim, and you can expect a broad interpretation of the term still life in around 170 works. This one runs until January 23.

Still life in French is nature morte, but the nature depicted by Bordeaux-born Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899) was very much alive. A retrospective with around 200 works at the Musée d'Orsay will tell the story of a pioneering woman artist who loved animals and who lived a very unconventional life. From October 18 to January 15. 

Susannah and the Elders: how many times has the biblical story of two lecherous old men seeking to seduce a young wife been depicted in art? It's a tale of abuse of power and sexual violence that has resonated down the centuries. Susanna: Images of a Woman from the Middle Ages to MeToo at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne from October 28 to February 26 will include more than 90 exhibits. The stand-out artists include Artemisia Gentileschi, Anthony van Dyck and Edouard Manet. 

At the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity starts on October 22. Dalí, Dorothea Tanning and Paul Delvaux are among the more than 20 artists featured in this examination of the Surrealists' interest in myth and the occult. It's on until January 29. 

Max Ernst is among the Surrealists on show in Potsdam, but other German artists in the mid-20th century had more concrete concerns as they lived through the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich and the birth of West German democracy: war, dictatorship, economic travails. Find out all about Art and Life, 1918 to 1955 at the Lenbachhaus in Munich from October 15 to April 16. George Grosz, Christian Schad, Paul Klee and Gabriele Münter are among the bigger names included. 

The final new show we've picked out this month is at the Danish National Gallery in Copenhagen: Henri Matisse -- The Red Studio. Matisse's 1911 painting of his studio on the outskirts of Paris -- regarded as a key work in his oeuvre and thus in the development of modern art -- depicts a number of other artworks, and now they're all reunited for this exhibition. The Danish museum owns three of them; MoMA in New York owns The Red Studio itself, and the show's already been on there to excellent reviews. It will run in Copenhagen from October 13 to February 26. 

Last chance to see.... 

The Lightbox in Woking calls time on October 9 on Bawden, Ravilious and the Art of Great Bardfield, a small but delightful show taking you back to an age when the village bobby rode his bicycle and milk churns stood at the roadside awaiting collection. The Lightbox's main exhibition on Venice featuring Canaletto and Melissa McGill continues until mid-November.

For those in or around Washington, you have until October 10 to get to the National Gallery of Art to see the superb (and free) show about James Whistler's Woman in White, his muse and model Joanna Hiffernan, which we thoroughly enjoyed at the Royal Academy in London earlier in the year. 

Running until October 16 at the Wallace Collection in London is Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts. It's a really absorbing show; go and find out why Fragonard's The Swing is such a Disney image.

One of the best things we've seen this year is the Glyn Philpot exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, which closes on October 23. It's full of surprising and memorable pictures; how did such a fantastic artist remain so little-known for so long?

Finally, Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace at the Queen's Gallery in Edinburgh has been extended until October 31, after being closed for the mourning period following the death of Queen Elizabeth. It includes some stunning Dutch Golden Age paintings. 

Images

Paul Cezanne, The Basket of Apples, c. 1893, The Art Institute of Chicago
Helen Saunders, Vorticist Composition (Black and Khaki), c. 1915, The Courtauld, London. © Estate of Helen Saunders
Salvador Dalí, Lobster Telephone, 1938. Photo: West Dean College of Arts and Conservation, West Sussex. © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, DACS 2022
Artemisia Gentileschi, Susannah and the Elders, 1622, The Burghley House Collection, Stamford, Lincolnshire

Edward Bawden, The Road to Thaxted, c. 1956, The Fry Art Gallery, Saffron Walden, Essex. © The Estate of Edward Bawden
Glyn Philpot, Tom Whiskey (M. Julien Zaïre), 1931, Private collection, courtesy of Richard Osborn Fine Art