Opening and Closing in February

London's Courtauld Gallery is our first stop this month, for Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection in the Swiss city of Winterthur. Cezanne, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and van Gogh are among the artists featured in this show, which is taking place because the villa Am Römerholz, where the collection is usually housed, is being renovated this year. This exhibition is on from February 14 to May 26.

Think of Chelsea, and you may think of the annual flower show. The Saatchi Gallery, right on the King's Road, is picking up on that theme, playing host to some 500 artworks and objects in what looks to be a somewhat overwhelming exhibition entitled Flowers -- Flora in Contemporary Art & Culture. Dozens of artists are listed as being featured -- Pedro Almodóvar, Elizabeth Blackadder, Michael Craig-Martin and Damien Hirst, to name just a handful. It's on from February 12 until May 5.

And with a younger audience in mind, Young V&A in Bethnal Green opens Making Egypt on February 15. Featuring objects that in some cases date back thousands of years, the show explores the fascination of mummies and hieroglyphs and the continued influence of Egypt on culture to the modern day. Until November 2.

Tate St Ives is putting on a big exhibition dedicated to Ithell Colquhoun, perhaps best known for her early Surrealist paintings. More than 200 exhibits -- many previously never shown in public -- will illustrate the full range of her interests in areas such as feminism and the occult. Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds runs from February 1 to May 5 in Cornwall, and then from June 13 there'll be concurrent shows of Colquhoun and Edward Burra at Tate Britain in London.

The weather can be dreich in Edinburgh at this time of year, so you might be in need of some sun and colour. The solution: Head to Dovecot Studios for The Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives. This show aims to present the early 20th-century quartet of JD Fergusson, GL Hunter, FCB Cadell and SJ Peploe in the context of their European and British contemporaries -- Matisse and Derain, but also Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Augustus John. February 7 to June 28.

Rembrandt's pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten prided himself on his ability to make the unreal appear real, as we saw in a show at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna late last year. Van Hoogstraaten's fantastic trompe l'oeils are now going on display at the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam from February 1 to May 4 under the title of The Illusionist.

More Golden Age paintings in the Stedelijk Museum in Alkmaar, north of Amsterdam. The Kremer Collection: A Shared Love from February 14 to June 1 presents almost 50 pictures from a major private collection of Dutch and Flemish art. Rembrandt, Frans Hals and Pieter de Hooch are among the artists represented.

From February 15, the Kunstmuseum in The Hague takes us on a tour of the rapidly modernising capital of France in the late 19th century, for an exhibition centred on three reunited 1867 views by Claude Monet. Running until June 9, New Paris: From Monet to Morisot also features paintings by Manet, Degas, Renoir and Caillebotte, among others, as well as posters, photographs and more.

When we were last in Paris, we saw the sprawling Surrealism show at the Pompidou Centre, marking the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto. Many of the artworks have travelled on to the Fundación Mapfre in Madrid for the next leg of a multi-city tour. This version -- 1924: Other Surrealisms -- from February 6 to May 11 will have a greater focus on artists from Spain and Latin America. Then later in the year, there are different interpretations of your surreal dreams at Hamburg's Kunsthalle and at Philadelphia Museum of Art.

There are more Surrealists at the Fondation Beyeler, just outside Basel. From February 16 to May 4, you can see The Key to Dreams: Surrealist Masterworks from the Collection Hersaint, featuring about 50 works by the likes of Dorothea Tanning, Max Ernst, René Magritte and Salvador Dalí.

Norway's most renowned woman painter in the late 19th century was Harriet Backer, and a major retrospective of her work has been touring; we went to see it at the Musée d'Orsay on our Paris trip. The last stop for this show is at the Kode museums in the Norwegian port city of Bergen, where Harriet Backer: Every Atom Is Colour is on from February 21 to August 24.

Meanwhile, in the Norwegian capital, you can explore Gothic Modern: From Darkness to Light at the Nasjonalmuseet, which presents art from the period between 1875 and 1925 alongside exhibits from the Middle Ages and the Northern Renaissance, exploring the intense emotion in both. With 250 works from more than 60 artists including Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh and Lucas Cranach the Elder, this show is on from February 28 to June 15. After Oslo, it'll be at the Albertina in Vienna from September.

On a somewhat lighter note, from February 20 to May 18 the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm has a show about Pierre Bonnard and the Nordic Countries. The curators have brought together more than 100 works by Bonnard to show his influence on Scandinavian painters. In June, the exhibition moves on to the Lillehammer Kunstmuseum in Norway.

The Gustave Caillebotte exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay was one of our absolute highlights of 2024, presenting a glorious collection of stunning pictures by this key figure among the Impressionists. Readers in North America will be able to see Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men at the Getty Center in Los Angeles from February 25 to May 25. It goes on to the Art Institute of Chicago in June.

Last chance to see....

You'll have to be quick; Akseli Gallen-Kallela: Picturing Finland, with its mix of landscape and myth, ends at the Belvedere in Vienna on February 2.

Images

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), The Clown Cha-U-Kao, 1895. Image: The Swiss Confederation, Federal Office of Culture, Oskar Reinhart Collection Am Römerholz, Winterthur
George Leslie Hunter (1877-1931), Peonies in a Chinese Vase, 1925. Image courtesy of the Fleming Collection

Marcel Jean (1900-1993), Surrealist Wardrobe, 1941, Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris
Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Jeunes filles à la mouette, 1917, Petit Palais, musée des beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris. Image: RMN -- Ernest Bulloz

Opening and Closing in October

There's been a spate of exhibitions over the past few years aimed at redressing centuries of neglect of the work of women artists, and the Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi is the latest to come into focus, at the National Gallery in London, starting on October 3. Most of the works have never been seen in Britain before, and they cover a lengthy career that features strong female figures in Biblical and classical scenes, as well as self-portraits. Until January 24. Also starting at the National on October 7 is a free exhibition that looks at Sin , as depicted by artists from Diego Velázquez and William Hogarth through to Tracey Emin, blurring the boundaries between the religious and the secular. This one runs until January 3. Tate Britain shows this winter how JMW Turner embraced the rapid industrial and technological advances at the start of the 19th century and recorded them in his work. Turner's Modern World , starting on October 28, will inclu...

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