Opening and Closing in October

October's another big month for new exhibitions, with Titian, Rembrandt and Goya among the artists on the agenda in mainland Europe. In London, though, the Royal Academy is staying British with a look at the final 12 years of the career of John Constable, from 1825 to 1837. Late Constable is characterised by expressive brushwork and features paintings and sketches of the British countryside and studies of the weather, in locations such as Hampstead Heath and Brighton seafront. On from October 30 to February 13. 

At the National Gallery, Poussin and the Dance is intended to show the French painter in a new light, illustrating how he tackled the challenges of capturing movement and bodily expression. Running from October 9 to January 2, it includes not only the Wallace Collection's A Dance to the Music of Time but also more than 20 paintings and drawings from public and private collections around Europe and the US. The show moves to the Getty Center in Los Angeles in February.  

Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens at the British Library explores the complex and turbulent relationship between the rulers of late 16th-century Scotland and England, who never met in person, in their own words and their own handwriting. Original documents, drawings, jewellery, textiles, maps and paintings from collections across Britain and beyond aim to provide a fresh take on a story filled with espionage and treachery. October 8 to February 20. 

For something completely different, head out to Walthamstow and the William Morris Gallery, which is staging Young Poland, the first ever exhibition in the UK to explore the decorative arts and architecture movement that sprang up in Poland at the end of the 19th century in response to the country's loss of sovereignty. The show features over 150 works, most of which have never previously left Poland, including furniture and textiles. This one runs from October 9 to January 30, and there's free admission. 

The best exhibition we've seen this year was the John Nash retrospective at Towner Eastbourne, and on October 23 it reopens at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. John Nash: The Landscape of Love and Solace brings together paintings he made reflecting his traumatic experience on the front line in World War I, sublime landscapes and a rich collection of engravings, drawings and book illustrations from a long and varied career. On until January 23, and running concurrently at Compton Verney with the stunning woodcarving of Grinling Gibbons. 

Laura Knight broke new ground for women artists in the 1930s by becoming the first fully fledged female member of the Royal Academy since its founding years, and Laura Knight: A Panoramic View at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, starting on October 9, illustrates her long career through more than 160 of her works from public and private collections. Until February 20. The gallery in Milton Keynes has a superb exhibition space; we loved the George Stubbs show there a couple of years ago. 

And at York Art Gallery, October 1 sees the start of Young Gainsborough: Rediscovered Landscape Drawings, which puts on display for the first time 25 drawings from the Royal Collection that have been newly attributed to Thomas Gainsborough. They're on show alongside Gainsborough paintings and other works borrowed from collections across the UK and Ireland. Until February 13. 

Let's cross the Channel now and head first to Vienna, where the Kunsthistorisches Museum's big autumn show is Titian's Vision of Women. Opening on October 5, this exhibition will examine how women are depicted in the work of Titian and his Venetian contemporaries, among them Paolo Veronese and Lorenzo Lotto. There are 60 paintings on loan from international collections, including the Met and the Hermitage, and the selection of pictures posted on the KHM's website looks pretty sumptuous. This show runs until January 16 in the Austrian capital and is due to move on to the Palazzo Reale in Milan in February. 

Another Rembrandt exhibition? Yes, it's Rembrandt in Amsterdam: Creativity and Competition at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. Not Young Rembrandt, nor late Rembrandt, but middle-years Rembrandt from the 1630s to the 1650s, the period of his rise to the top of the Amsterdam art market. Some 60 of the artist's own works will be displayed with around 80 by his contemporaries, and the show features plenty of loans from other major galleries. On from October 6 to January 30. 

Dreams of Freedom: Romanticism in Russia & Germany at the Albertinum in Dresden brings together more than 140 paintings from the early 19th century from museums in the two countries, including the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, which has co-organised the show. Caspar David Friedrich tops the list of painters represented. October 2 to February 6. 

The Kunsthalle in Bremen offers Manet and Astruc: Friendship & Inspiration. Who is Astruc? Edouard Manet's contemporary is almost unknown today, but Manet's 1866 Portrait of Zacharie Astruc is part of the Bremen collection, and this exhibition focuses on their shared interests and enthusiasms, as well as work by Manet, Astruc and other artists of the period, with loans coming from quite a few major US galleries. October 23 to February 27. 

In Frankfurt, the Schirn is putting on a big show devoted to Paula Modersohn-Becker, the leading woman artist at the start of the German Expressionist movement. Modersohn-Becker is known for her female nudes, among them self-portraits while pregnant; she died in 1907 shortly after giving birth at the age of just 31. This exhibition will have about 120 works and runs from October 8 to February 6. 

Continuing the Expressionist theme, the Bucerius Kunst Forum in Hamburg is putting on Nolde and the North, looking at the early years of the career of the Danish-German artist Emil Nolde, a man of many contradictions, and relating it to contemporary Danish painting. Nolde studied Danish art in Copenhagen at the start of the 20th century, and this show has about 80 of his works from that period, as well as pictures by painters such as Anna Ancher and Vilhelm Hammershøi. October 16 to January 23. 

Goya is one of those painters who seems to span the divide between the traditional and the modern, and the Beyeler Foundation on the outskirts of Basel is staging, beginning on October 10, what it describes as one of the most important exhibitions about the artist to have been put on outside Spain. More than 70 paintings, including rarely exhibited works from Spanish private collections, will be on show until January 23.

What's the most notorious Surrealist art object? Perhaps Salvador Dalí's Mae West Lips Sofa or Lobster Telephone? Or maybe it's Meret Oppenheim's fur-lined teacup.... A big show with some 200 works by the German-Swiss artist -- Meret Oppenheim: My Exhibition -- has its only stop in Europe at the Kunstmuseum in Bern from October 22 to February 13. Alas for the Swiss, her furry cup is staying in New York, where it can be seen when the exhibition gets to the Museum of Modern Art a year from now.  

At the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the focus is on Renaissance portraits from the 15th and 16th centuries. Remember Me will feature more 100 pictures, including loans from all over Europe and the US, examining the first flourishing of portraiture in western art. There's Holbein, Dürer, Lotto and Piero di Cosimo, among others, from October 1 to January 16. 

We mentioned Constable right at the start of this month's round-up, and the new show at the Dordrechts Museum explains why Dordrecht's most famous painter was such an influence on him and other British landscape artists. If you owned a British stately home, an Aelbert Cuyp landscape was a must-have accessory on your walls. In the Light of Cuyp: Aelbert Cuyp & Gainsborough, Constable, Turner runs from October 3 to March 6 and includes 30 of Cuyp's most important paintings and a similar number by his British followers. 

Moving on to Paris, the Petit Palais is holding an exhibition devoted to Ilya Repin (1844-1930), one of the greatest names in Russian art but not so well known in Western Europe. Through around 100 paintings, with loans from Moscow and St Petersburg among others, the curators hope you'll discover the painter of the soul of Russia. The show runs from October 5 to January 23.  

Across the river at the Musée d'Orsay, the spotlight is not so much on Paul Signac the painter, but on Signac the Collector. Whose work did Signac acquire? His fellow neo-Impressionists like Seurat, but also the Nabis such as Bonnard and Vuillard and even Walter Sickert. Find out more from October 12 to February 13. 

In Brussels, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts can book you a day return for Europalia: Tracks to Modernity. This show, departing on October 15, explores how artists in the 19th and 20th century depicted rail travel. Monet, Caillebotte, Spilliaert, Magritte and of course the Belgian train painter par excellence, Paul Delvaux. Until February 13. 

One final opening to mention this month: The spectacular new Munch Museum in Oslo welcomes its first visitors on October 22, and from that date you can see Tracey Emin/Edvard Munch: The Loneliness of the Soul, exploring how Emin has been influenced by Munch over her career. The show, previously on at the Royal Academy in London, runs until January 2. 

Last chance to see....

October 24 is your final opportunity at the British Museum to visit Nero: The Man behind the Myth, and find out if the much maligned Roman Emperor really was a villain after all.

It may be getting a bit late in the year for a dip in the English Channel, but you still have until October 31 to get down to Hastings Contemporary for Seaside Modern, the enjoyable show looking at how British artists in the early 20th century depicted life on the beach.

And October 31 is also the last day for Bellotto: The Königstein Views Reunited at the National Gallery in London, where you can see all five of the Venetian's richly detailed paintings of the imposing Saxon fortress in one place before they're again separated. 

Images

John Constable, A Boat Passing a Lock, 1826, Royal Academy of Arts, London. Photo © Royal Academy of Arts, London; photographer: Prudence Cuming Associates Limited

John Nash, Oppy Wood, 1918, Imperial War Museums

Titian, Flora, c. 1517, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence. © Galleria Palatina e Appartamenti Reali di Palazzo Pitti, su concessione del Ministero della cultura

Francisco de Goya, Doña María del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva Álvarez de Toledo, 13th Duchess of Alba, 1795, Fundación Casa de Alba, Palacio de Liria, Madrid

Aelbert Cuyp, The Maas at Dordrecht, c. 1650, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Robert Duckworth Greenham, On the Beach, 1934, The Ingram Collection. © The copyright holder. Photo: The Ingram Collection