Opening and Closing in September

As London's Courtauld Gallery closes for a makeover, some of its highlights are making the short trip up the Strand for a show at the National Gallery. Courtauld Impressionists, which runs from September 17 to January 20, brings together works purchased in the 1920s by the industrialist Samuel Courtauld for his own collection as well as Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings he helped acquire for the National Gallery. Manet, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat and Bonnard are represented and tickets are a modestly priced £7.50.

There are two new exhibitions at the Royal Academy. The first traces the career of Renzo Piano, architect of the Shard, and it's on from September 15 to January 20. The second, starting September 29 and running until December 10, looks at the indigenous art of Oceania, marking the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific. Huge canoes and stunning god images are promised among the 200 artefacts.

Dulwich Picture Gallery is unashamedly aiming for sensation and shock in its new exhibition starting September 26. Ribera: Art of Violence is the first British show devoted to the Spanish Baroque painter Jusepe de Ribera and will showcase 45 works including depictions of saintly martyrdom. "This extraordinary 17th-century artist will be presented in a dramatic and exciting way, creating a visitor experience akin to witnessing a Quentin Tarantino film," says the gallery's director, Jennifer Scott. This particular movie (Pulp Depiction?) is showing until January 27.

Something rather different at the British Museum, where I object: Ian Hislop's search for dissent begins on September 6. The Private Eye editor has sought out around 100 objects that show how people around the world have attempted to subvert authority, from ancient Mesopotamia to the 2016 US presidential election. It's on until January 20.

Last year, the Tate bought The Ferryman by William Stott of Oldham, one of the key British paintings in the move to naturalism and Impressionism in the late 19th century by an artist who was a big influence on the Glasgow Boys. It's now touring the UK, and from September 14 to January 12 it's the focus of a free show, Beneath the Surface, at Southampton City Art Gallery, putting it into the context of its time. Southampton has a fine collection of its own, though opening hours are a bit restricted.

Venice celebrates the 500th anniversary of the birth of Jacopo Tintoretto in 2019, so the city is pushing a whole fleet of gondolas out to honour one of its greatest 16th-century painters. At the Gallerie dell'Accademia, there's The Young Tintoretto, focusing on more than 20 works from his first decade as an artist. You'll struggle to find any info at all about this on the English-language bit of the Accademia's website, but Venice's Civic Museums are doing a lot better at publicising the companion show Tintoretto 1519-1594, a co-production with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which is in the Doge's Palace, with 50 paintings brought in from major museums on both sides of the Atlantic. Both shows are on from September 7 to January 6, as is one on Venice during the age of Tintoretto in the Palazzo Mocenigo, Venice's textile and costume museum.

In Paris, Picasso: Blue and Rose is the new exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay from September 18 to January 6. Covering the period from 1900 to 1906, the show includes a number of previously unseen works.

Caravaggio's Roman Period at Paris's Musée Jacquemart-Andre (September 21 to January 28) brings together canvases by the Baroque master, including loans from Italy and the Hermitage, with those of his contemporaries.

Elsewhere in Paris, the Musée Marmottan Monet has a show of about 60 paintings by Impressionists and Fauvists in private collections, including Monet, Caillebotte and Van Gogh, from September 13 to February 10.

One of the best-loved paintings in Dresden's Gemäldegalerie is The Chocolate Girl by Jean-Etienne Liotard, and it's the focus of a special exhibition from September 28 to January 6 in the museum, which has one of Europe's finest collections of Old Masters. This extraordinary pastel wasn't in the Liotard show at the Royal Academy in 2015-16.

Elsewhere in Germany, there's an interesting-looking exhibition at the Städel in Frankfurt devoted to Lotte Laserstein, whose work has recently been rediscovered. Laserstein painted striking portraits during the Weimar Republic, but emigrated to Sweden after the Nazis took power and fell into obliviion. 

Still time to see...

The quirky and understated work of Edward Bawden at Dulwich Picture Gallery, running until September 9. A fine selection of Dutch Masterpieces from National Trust Houses at the Holburne Museum in Bath, on until September 16 before transferring to the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Works by 80 women artists inspired by Virginia Woolf are also on show until September 16 at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, before a transfer to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Aftermath at Tate Britain, featuring the work of British, French and German artists during and after World War I, continues until September 23. And in Berlin, you can see how Friedrich, Courbet and Renoir hit the open road in Wanderlust at the Alte Nationalgalerie, which finishes on September 16. 

Images

Edouard Manet, Déjeuner sur l'herbe, about 1863-8. © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London
Edward VII penny, 1903, defaced with the slogan "Votes for Women". © The Trustees of the British Museum
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Lute Player, 1595-1596, Hermitage Museum of St Petersburg. © The State Hermitage Museum, photo by Pavel Demidov
Jean-Etienne Liotard, The Chocolate Girl, 1744/45, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. © Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, SKD
Lotte Laserstein, Russian Girl with Compact, 1928, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018, photo: Städel Museum -- ARTOTHEK