What a lot of new exhibitions this October! We list well over 20 across Europe below -- many more than usual -- and have still had to leave out quite a few that we'd mention in most other months in order to keep this post to a reasonable length. Let's start at the Royal Academy in London with deep blue seas, cloudless skies, intense light and the heat of the sun. From October 2 to January 31, you can experience the excitement Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso and many others felt while Painting the French Riviera . The exhibition features more than 160 exhibits from the 1870s to the 1960s, and a version of the show travels on to the Cleveland Museum of Art in March. Hmm, Renoir. Now perhaps seen as the most chocolate-boxy of the Impressionists, but without doubt the creator of some of the most recognisable images in French art of the late 19th century. Well worth stealing , and clearly the National Gallery is on to a winner with its Renoir and Love ex...
Mary, Queen of Scots: She acceded to the throne when just six days old, spent her childhood in France, was married three times and was forced to abdicate by an uprising. She fled south seeking the protection of her cousin Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen of England. But the Catholic Mary had once claimed the crown of the Protestant Elizabeth, and she spent nearly two decades in custody, never actually coming face-to-face with her cousin, before she was eventually executed for plotting against Elizabeth. What a story. Dynastic ambition, power politics, religious strife, sex and quite a lot of violence. Gorgeous costumes too. No wonder it's had such a hold on the imaginations of dramatists and musicians down the centuries. Schiller's play, Donizetti's opera, films starring the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson. Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens at the British Library in London captures some of the drama and spectacle of the events. The...