Opening and Closing in September

Many of the big names in the history of American art are relatively little known in Europe, and so the idea of a show devoted to one of them at London's National Gallery is a tempting prospect. Winslow Homer: Force of Nature, from September 10 to January 8, features around 50 works, many focusing on man's relationship with nature and the elements. This introduction to the artist, who lived from 1836 to 1910, is organised together with the Metropolitan Museum in New York, whose own larger Homer show this summer had largely positive reviews.  

Can you name Lithuania's most famous artist? Thought not. We'll put you out of your misery: It's Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911). Dulwich Picture Gallery has a fine tradition of introducing you to art you never knew existed, and M.K. Čiurlionis: Between Worlds, running from September 21 to March 12, will feature more than 100 works that often have an ethereal, fantastical quality. Most will be on show in the UK for the first time. 

And continuing London's eclectic mix this month on the theme of unfamiliar work by unfamiliar artists, Tate Modern will be bringing us the abstract, organic sculptures of Maria Bartuszová (1936-96) from Czechoslovakia, as was. Her fragile creations are a very long way from Socialist Realism. This show is on from September 20 to April 16. 

It's hard to escape the increasing influence of South Korea on global culture and technology, whether its through your Samsung mobile phone, music from boy bands like BTS or the Oscar-winning movie Parasite. All this and more will be explored in Hallyu! The Korean Wave, the new exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum. It's scheduled to run from September 24 to June 25. 

It's a century since the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, but ancient Egyptian civilisation continues to have a hold on the imagination. Visions of Ancient Egypt at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich explores our fascination with the land of the Pyramids through more than 150 artworks, with Joshua Reynolds, Lawrence Alma-Tadema and David Hockney among the leading names featured. September 3 to January 1. 

Anglo-Saxon England's most spectacular manuscript, the Lindisfarne Gospels, is at the centre of an exhibition at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle from September 17 to December 3. Created not too far from the Tyne on Holy Island, also known as Lindisfarne, off the Northumberland coast, the gospels are on loan from the British Library. They are complemented by a range of other early medieval treasures and further illuminated by an immersive display. 

The Ikon Gallery in Birmingham is mounting the first ever exhibition dedicated to the sketches and landscape drawings of Edward Lear, best known for his nonsense verse. Nearly 60 works, many exhibited for the first time, will be on show in Edward Lear: Moment to Moment from September 9 to November 13, and entry is free of charge. 

The long-standing friendship between Pablo Picasso and photojournalist Lee Miller is the subject of the new show at Newlands House in Petworth, West Sussex from September 10 to January 8. Miller lived in a farmhouse in Sussex with the Surrealist artist Roland Penrose, and the Lee Miller & Picasso exhibition will include many works that have only recently been rediscovered in the loft. 

The Donatello exhibition that was on recently in Florence is coming to the Victoria & Albert Museum early next year, but if you can't wait till then, head to Berlin's Gemäldegalerie. Donatello: Inventor of the Renaissance includes about 90 works by the ground-breaking 15th-century sculptor, some previously never seen outside Italy. The run in Berlin lasts from September 2 to January 8.

Likely to draw the crowds to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris: Edvard Munch -- A Poem of Life, Love and Death, which is being put on in collaboration with the Munch Museum in Oslo. This show, featuring around 100 works, is due to run from September 20 to January 22. We feel we've seen a lot of Munch down the years, although we have been to Oslo quite a bit....

What else is on in Paris? Maybe something a bit less obvious? How about Facing the Sun at the Musée Marmottan Monet? Marking the 150th anniversary of the birth of Impressionism in the shape of Claude Monet's 1872 painting Impression, Sunrise, this exhibition brings together images featuring the Sun by Dürer, Rubens, Turner and many more (Munch among them!). On from September 21 to January 29, after which it transfers to the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, near Berlin. 

And for something else a bit more esoteric, immerse yourself in the dark, disturbing world of the Swiss-born British artist Henry Fuseli (or Johann Heinrich Füssli), painter of nightmares. The Musée Jacquemart-André presents Füssli: the Realm of Dreams and the Fantastic from September 16 to January 23, with some 60 works on show. 

To the Netherlands, now, where the Mauritshuis in the The Hague will be showing Manhattan Masters: Rembrandt and Friends from the Frick NYC from September 29 to January 15. A Rembrandt self-portrait is among this selection of 10 paintings from the Frick Collection in New York (currently under renovation), most of which haven't been seen in Europe for more than a century.

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam will tell the story of Clara the Rhinoceros, who caused a sensation and became a celebrity when she arrived in Holland in 1741. Few Europeans had ever seen a rhino, and artists responded with realistic depictions of this new phenomenon. September 30 to January 15.

Around 1600, many people from what was then the southern Netherlands fled to Haarlem to escape their Spanish rulers. Among them were many artists, most prominently Frans Hals. Newcomers: Flemish Artists in Haarlem 1580-1630 at the city's Frans Hals Museum explores their story. It's on from September 30 to January 8. 

Also in Haarlem, the Teylers Museum will be looking at art through David Hockney's Eye. In this show, previously on in Cambridge, you can explore the development of Hockney's way of seeing and representing the world, and discover how he believes the Old Masters translated reality into paint, with work by artists including Claude Lorrain and Pieter Saenredam as well as historic optical instruments. September 23 to January 29. 

Masses of Old Masters will be paired up at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna for Idols & Rivals: Artists in Competition, the gallery's big autumn show with 60 or so major works from the museum and a similar number of international loans. Leonardo against Michelangelo, Rubens against van Dyck, painting versus sculpture. This exhibition will be on from September 20 to January 8. 

Last chance to see....

There are plenty of reasons to go and see the Walter Sickert exhibition at Tate Britain, which is on until September 18, if you haven't already been: his clever perspectives on the Victorian and Edwardian music hall, his illuminating cityscapes, and his surprising late paintings that presage Pop Art. If you can't make it, the show moves on to the Petit Palais in Paris from October 14. 

There's some superb art to admire, particularly by Rembrandt and other Dutch Golden Age greats, in Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace at the Queen's Gallery in Edinburgh, which runs until September 25. We saw the show in London last year. 

Still on at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich until September 25 is Canaletto's Venice Revisited, presenting 24 Canaletto views of Venice that normally hang in Woburn Abbey. These delightful paintings are coupled with warnings about the threat to the city's very existence from overtourism and climate change. 

The Towner in Eastbourne is one of our favourite exhibition venues, and their linked shows highlighting the legacy on modern British art of mid-20th century gallery owner Lucy Wertheim also come to an end on September 25. You'll find much to surprise you from artists you've possibly never heard of before. 

Images

Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream, 1899 (reworked by 1906), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Maria Bartuszová, Egg, but not Columbus's, 1987. Courtesy Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava
Front cover of Lindisfarne Gospels, c. 700. © British Library Board

Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1810, private collection
Frans Hals, Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen, c. 1652, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels

Walter Sickert, The P.S. Wings in the O.P. Mirror, c. 1888-89, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen