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Opening and Closing in April

We'll start this month at the King's Gallery in London, where more than 300 artworks and other objects from the Royal Collection will be on display from April 11 for  The Edwardians: Age of Elegance . Illustrating the tastes of the period between the death of Victoria and World War I, the show features the work of John Singer Sargent , Edward Burne-Jones , William Morris and Carl Fabergé, among others. On to November 23. More Morris at, unsurprisingly, the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow.  Morris Mania , which runs from April 5 to September 21, aims to show how his designs have continued to capture the imagination down the decades, popping up in films and on television, in every part of the home, on trainers, wellies, and even in nuclear submarines.... From much the same era, Guildhall Art Gallery in the City offers  Evelyn De Morgan: The Modern Painter in Victorian London  from April 4 to January 4. De Morgan's late Pre-Raphaelite work with its beautifull...

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Opening in July

Edinburgh takes centre-stage in July, with the start of two big exhibitions. Rembrandt: Britain's Discovery of the Master runs at the Scottish National Gallery from July 7 to October 14 and aims to show how the taste for Rembrandt's work has evolved over four centuries. It features major paintings by Rembrandt in British collections as well as some that used to be in the UK but are now overseas. There'll also be work by British artists influenced by Rembrandt, including Hogarth, Reynolds, Kossoff and Auerbach.
A week later, on July 14, Emil Nolde: Colour Is Life opens at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Running until October 21, this show comprises about 100 works, including 40 paintings from the Nolde Foundation in Seebüll on Germany's border with Denmark. Nolde's vibrant Expressionism led to his art being labelled as degenerate by the Nazis, yet he was also a supporter of National Socialism. It's worth noting that when this exhibition was on at the National Gallery of Ireland earlier this year, there was some controversy about perceptions of anti-Semitism in Nolde's work.
The Musée des Impressionnismes in Giverny, just a short walk from Monet's house and garden on the banks of the River Seine to the north-west of Paris, organises a couple of Impressionist-themed exhibitions every year, and its new show, starting on July 27, is a retrospective of the neo-Impressionist Henri-Edmond Cross, whose works influenced Fauvism and Cubism. This exhibition is on until November 4, after which it moves to the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, just outside Berlin, a very impressive new gallery in one of Germany's most attraction-filled small cities.

And finally, off to the seaside for two new shows at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, a classic 1930s building situated halfway between the city centre and Scheveningen, the former fishing village that became a a fashionable resort on the North Sea coast. Beach Life focuses on the late 19th-century Hague School's views of Scheveningen and shows how artists like Anton Mauve and Willem and Jacob Maris interpreted the interplay of light, sky and water. It runs from July 6 to September 16.

The other exhibition, which starts on July 14, takes us ahead several decades to show the inspiration the Dutch coast had on artists in the early 20th century, including Piet Mondriaan, Jan Toorop and Jacoba van Heemskerck. By the Sea continues until November 18.

Images

Rembrandt van Rijn, Reverend Johannes Elison, 1634, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, William K. Richardson Fund
Emil Nolde, Large Poppies (Red, Red, Red), 1942. (c) Nolde Stiftung Seebüll
Jan Toorop, Sea and Dune at Zoutelande, 1907, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag

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