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Opening and Closing in May

Art history? No, we're starting this month with an exhibition that we'll be tagging #artherstory on social media. Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920  opens at Tate Britain in London on May 16, with the aim of charting the path of women to being recognised as professional artists over the centuries. More than 100 will be represented: relatively widely known names such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffman , Gwen John and Laura Knight , as well as the more obscure or neglected -- Levina Teerlinc, Mary Beale and Sarah Biffin . It's on till October 13, and as we've just seen a show in Germany focused on women artists over much the same timescale, we'll be keen to compare and contrast. Let's stick with a female theme. A short stroll up Millbank and across Lambeth Bridge, and you're at the Garden Museum, where from May 15 to September 29 you can see Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors . The show takes you around the gardens of Vane

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Opening and Closing in January

Pablo Picasso kicks off the exhibition year in London, with Picasso and Paper at the Royal Academy bringing together more than 300 works from an 80-year career. Drawing, printmaking, collage and even paper sculpture all feature in this show, running from January 25 to April 13.
Just outside the capital, we've enjoyed a couple of shows recently at the Lightbox in Woking, and their new exhibition is David Hockney: Ways of Working. It will look at how one of Britain's most popular artists has explored the possibilities of a wide range of media over 60 years. January 25 to April 19.

Edward Hopper is the subject of the first big show of the year at the Fondation Beyeler, just outside Basel. It will focus on Hopper's landscapes and cityscapes, and it's been put together with the Whitney Museum in New York, which holds the largest collection of his works. January 26 to May 17.
Also on in Switzerland, from January 24 to May 24: Canada and Impressionism at the Fondation de l'Hermitage in Lausanne, featuring around 100 works from 35 Canadian artists.

A big exhibition at the Kunstpalast in Dusseldorf will be devoted to Angelica Kauffman (we'll stick with the usual English spelling), the late 18th-century Swiss-born painter who was one of the few women to break through into the very male-dominated art world of the time. The show, featuring around 100 works, runs from January 30 to May 24, and it will transfer to the Royal Academy in London at the end of June.

In the Netherlands, Mirror of the Soul is an exhibition at the Singer Museum in Laren, near Hilversum, that aims to take a new look at Dutch art around 1900 with a focus on intimate portraits and interiors. Organised in conjunction with the Rijksmuseum, it will feature about 70 works, including paintings by Jan Toorop and Piet Mondriaan, and will be on from January 14 to May 10. 

Last chance to see....

You have until January 5 to catch Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life at Tate Modern, a show that contains some wonderful examples of Eliasson's immersive art, and some ho-hum bits too. January 5 is also positively the last opportunity to see Two Last Nights! Show Business in Georgian Britain at the Foundling Museum in London. And there are only a very, very few tickets available on the door at Sir John Soane's Museum for the wonderful chance to appreciate all of William Hogarth's storytelling series in one location at the same time in Hogarth: Place and Progress, which closes on the same day.
Also coming back to Earth on January 5, the show at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich combining art, religion and science and marking the 50th anniversary of man's first landing on The Moon.

If you've not partaken of the Last Supper in Pompeii at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, you'll have to hurry as the kitchen closes on January 12 on this really enjoyable show about how the Romans ate and drank. Similarly ending that day is Burning Bright, a rare opportunity for a good look at the Scottish Colourists down south, at the Lightbox in Woking.

Two exhibitions in the Netherlands close on January 12: Van Gogh's Inner Circle at the Noordbrabants Museum in Den Bosch proved to be a little thin on interesting paintings, but Jean-François Millet: Sowing the Seeds of Modern Art at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is a stunner of a show, with a host of loans demonstrating the breadth of Millet's influence.
January 12 is also the last day at the Kunstforum in Vienna for the Pierre Bonnard exhibition that we saw and largely liked at Tate Modern at the start of 2019.

There are some interesting artworks and stories in Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican in London, which closes on January 19, but we found the presentation dreary and uninspired.

Two more exhibitions come to an end in the Netherlands on January 19: the excellent Rembrandt-Velázquez show at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam comparing 17th-century Dutch and Spanish art, and the retrospective of Rembrandt's pupil Nicolaes Maes at the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The Maes show will move to London's National Gallery from February 22, with free entry.

January 26 will be the final day at the British Museum for Inspired by the East, an exhibition about the influence of the Middle East on Western art that we found unexpectedly dull. Much better is the superb look at the career of Britain's greatest animal painter, George Stubbs, at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, which closes the same day before a smaller version of the show heads to the Mauritshuis.
The National Portrait Gallery's only partially successful attempt to retell the story of the Pre-Raphaelites from the female point of view -- Pre-Raphaelite Sisters -- also closes in London on January 26, as does the sensory overload of the Bridget Riley exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, which we loved when it was on in Edinburgh.

You can see the extensive Toulouse-Lautrec retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris until January 27, which is also the final day at the Musée de l’Orangerie for one of the most surprisingly enjoyable shows of 2019, presenting Félix Fénéon, art critic and collector and a major promoter of the Neo-Impressionists.

Images

Pablo Picasso, 'Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe' after Manet I, 1962, Musée National Picasso, Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris)/Marine Beck-Coppola; © Succession Picasso/DACS 2019
Edward Hopper, Railroad Sunset, 1929, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. © Heirs of Josephine Hopper/2019, ProLitteris, Zurich; Photo: © 2019 Digital image Whitney Museum of American Art/Licensed by Scala
William Hogarth, A Rake’s Progress, 3: The Orgy, 1734. © The Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum, London
Jean-François Millet, The Gleaners, 1857, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
George Stubbs, A Cheetah and a Stag with Two Indian Attendants, c. 1765. © Manchester Art Gallery/Bridgeman Images
Paul Signac, Opus 217. Against the Enamel of a Background Rhythmic with Beats and Angles, Tones, and Tints, Portrait of M. Félix Fénéon in 1890, 1891, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

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