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...
We've all done it on a wet weekend, haven't we? Gorged ourselves on a box set, watching one episode after another after another, combining gluttony and indulgence, just two of the vices that the great storyteller of the Georgian age, William Hogarth, was able to illustrate so memorably, along with all their consequences. Hogarth was the master of the 18th-century equivalent of the box set, the moral tale told in a series of paintings or engravings, and in London this autumn you get the chance to enjoy the art equivalent of that Netflix or iPlayer binge. Go along to Sir John Soane's Museum to see, for the first time ever, all of Hogarth's series of pictures together on show in one place. Debauchery, infidelity, addiction, insanity, political chicanery: Hogarth: Place and Progress has got the lot. And, astonishingly at a time when exhibitions in London are getting more and more expensive, this opportunity to get this close up to the defining works of one of Britain...