Opening and Closing in February

London's Courtauld Gallery has just reopened after renovation, and its first big exhibition, Van Gogh: Self-Portraits, starts on February 3. This show -- the first to cover the full range of Vincent van Gogh's self-portraiture -- will bring together around half those he created over his short career: 16 of them, from his time in Paris in 1886 to his stay in the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in September 1889. It runs until May 8.

At Tate Modern they're tackling another popular subject, surrealism, in the shape of Surrealism beyond Borders, which starts on February 24. The Tate says previous stories of surrealism have focused on Paris in the 20s -- not in our exhibition-going experience -- and that this one will rewrite the history of the genre, reaching across 50 years and looking at art in centres from Buenos Aires to Seoul. This show comes from the Met in New York; the New Yorker called it "deliriously entertaining", though the Wall Street Journal said it was "more informative than alluring". On at the Tate till August 29. 

Over to the Royal Academy for Whistler's Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan, which runs from February 26 to May 22. Many of James McNeill Whistler's works include the red-haired Hiffernan. They had a long professional and personal relationship, and this is the first exhibition to explore her role in Whistler's work. The show moves on to the National Gallery of Art in Washington in July. 

Where does most of the art we write about get made? In the studio, of course, and from February 24 the Whitechapel Gallery is celebrating A Century of the Artist's Studio: 1920-2020, with over 100 works from more than 80 artists and collectives from around the world. Bacon, Picasso, Schiele and Warhol are among the stand-out names (Note to Whitechapel: Schiele died in 1918). This show runs until June 5.

Let's go back a lot further in time at the British Museum, to The World of Stonehenge, the awe-inspiring ancient stone circle that dominates the landscape of Wiltshire. Open from February 17 to July 17, this exhibition will examine the story of Britain and Europe from 4000 BC to 1000 BC on the basis of recent archaeological and scientific discoveries. Among the star exhibits will be the Nebra Sky Disc from Germany, the oldest surviving map of the stars. 

One more show to mention in London this month, and that's Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Billed as a family-friendly exhibition, it aims to to help visitors discover the other side of the author of the Peter Rabbit books, as a scientist and conservationist, exploring the places and animals that inspired her writing and art. Starting on February 12, it will be on until January 8 next year. 

Camille Pissarro was one of the central figures in the Impressionist movement that revolutionised art in late 19th-century France, and from February 18 a big show at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford will celebrate his life and work. It's two decades since there was an exhibition devoted to him in the UK. Pissarro: Father of Impressionism will feature 120 works, 80 by the man himself and 40 by his friends and contemporaries, some on view for the first time in Britain. Until June 12.

We came across Eileen Mayo recently in the Laura Knight exhibition in Milton Keynes; she was one of Knight's favourite models but she was also an artist in her own right over many years, though she's far better known in New Zealand, where she spent the last three decades of her life. Eileen Mayo: A Natural History at Towner Eastbourne from February 12 to July 3 will display her work over a wide range of media including prints and painting for what is her first solo show in the UK; there's no admission charge. 

Let's cross to the Continent now, and first to Milan, where the Palazzo Reale has two enticing shows to offer: Titian and the Image of Woman runs from February 23 to June 5 and looks at how Titian and his fellow Venetian artists such as Tintoretto and Veronese represented female beauty. This exhibition comes from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, where it seems to have drawn some criticism for an overly traditional approach. At the same Milan venue from February 25 to June 26: Joaquín Sorolla: Painter of Light. It's the first major exhibition in Italy of Spain's leading painter of a century ago. We saw a fine Sorolla show at the National Gallery in London in 2019.  

For the first time since the 1950s, a large group of French Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings from the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo is back in Europe. The pictures, collected by shipping magnate Kojiro Matsukata, are going on show at the Museum Folkwang in Essen alongside the German gallery's own Impressionists amassed by its founder, the industrialist Karl Ernst Osthaus. Renoir, Monet, Gauguin: Images of a Floating World will run from February 6 to May 15 and feature around 120 works. 

You can usually rely on the Mauritshuis in The Hague for a small but perfectly formed exhibition, and this spring, even before the tulips start to blossom in the Dutch bulb fields, they're saying it with flowers. In Full Bloom from February 10 to June 6 discovers the floral still lives that became such a feature of the country's painting in the 17th century, a genre in which women painters played a leading role. 

Opening on February 24 at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen is Suzanne Valadon: Model, Painter, Rebel. Valadon posed for artists including Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec and defied the odds to achieve success in her own right as a painter of striking portraits and nudes. On until July 31. This show was previously at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia where it had extremely good reviews. 

Last chance to see....

February 13 is the last day to see Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace at the Queen's Gallery in London, with some fantastic paintings, particularly from the Dutch Golden Age, on show while the Buck House Picture Gallery is being modernised. The presentation, though, is rather dull. 

We thoroughly enjoyed Laura Knight: A Panoramic View at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, which is on until February 20, a retrospective of the first modern woman member of the Royal Academy who produced eye-catching paintings of the ballet, the circus and heroines of World War II. 

Another delight closing on February 20 is Peru: A Journey in Time at the British Museum, packed with striking artefacts from the country's ancient history. 

Also finishing the same day at the British Library is Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens, a history show with some fascinating exhibits but which we found tended to get a bit bogged down in detail. 

Dürer's Journeys, on until February 27 at the National Gallery in London, has a smattering of highlights from the German Renaissance master, though we found our interest waning towards the end. 

Finally, Manchester Art Gallery offers you the chance until February 27 to see for free four of Bernardo Bellotto's five 1750s views of the Königstein fortress in Saxony. Well worth it: we admired the full set at the National Gallery last year. 

Images

Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait, 1887, The Art Institute of Chicago
Nebra Sky Disc, Germany, about 1600 BC. Photo courtesy of the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt, Juraj Lipták
Jacob Marrel, Admirael vander Eyck, c. 1635-40, Private collection

Laura Knight, Assistant Section Leader Elspeth Henderson, MM, and Sergeant Helen Turner, MM, WAAF, 1941, Royal United Services Institute