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're going to start our September preview in Paris, where an absolute stunner of an exhibition is set to open belatedly at the Petit Palais: The Golden Age of Danish Painting . That Golden Age lasted for just over 60 years from the start of the 19th century when artists such as Christen Købke expressed a growing national pride in works of precision and clarity tinged with romanticism. We got to see this fabulous show early last year at the National Museum in Stockholm. It's on in Paris from September 22 to January 3, and if you get the chance to go, don't hesitate. A few minutes walk away, at the Musée de l'Orangerie, Giorgio de Chirico: Metaphysical Painting opens on September 16. De Chirico's enigmatic art from the first two decades of the 20th century draws on the German Romantics and prefigures the Surrealists. After it closes on December 14 it will transfer to the Kunsthalle in Hamburg early next year. If you head down the Seine from Paris to the Musé...