New Exhibitions in November

It's surely an anniversary the Tate has long been counting down to: JMW Turner was born in 1775, John Constable in 1776. To mark the 250 years of two of the country's greatest painters, Turner and Constable is on at Tate Britain from November 27 to April 12. Rivals with very different approaches to landscape painting, they were both hugely influential. More than 170 works are promised, with Turner's Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons and Constable's White Horse coming home from the US for the show.

Before those two were even born, Joseph Wright of Derby had already painted his most famous picture, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump. It'll be part of Wright of Derby: From the Shadows at the National Gallery from November 7 to May 10, which is intended to challenge the view of Wright as just a painter of light and shade and to illustrate how he used the night to explore deeper and more sombre themes. Only 20 or so works, however, making it a disappointingly small show for such a key British artist. 

Elsewhere in London, there's another overseas visitor at the Wallace Collection. Caravaggio's Cupid, a free exhibition from November 26 to April 12, showcases the artist's Victorious Cupid from the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, which has never been seen in public before in the UK. It's displayed with two classical sculptures that were part of the same collection it belonged to in Rome four centuries ago. 

We're very much looking forward to the new show at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, featuring Denmark's most famous woman painter, who's scarcely known in Britain. Anna Ancher: Painting Light, on from November 4 to March 8, will have more than 40 works, including loans from major Danish collections. Ancher was prominent among the painters of the Skagen art colony who settled at the northern tip of Jutland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, incorporating Impressionist and realist influences into their work. 

The indefatigable David Hockney has another exhibition starting in London, following his massive retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. From November 7, you can see just-completed pictures in David Hockney: Some Very, Very, Very New Paintings Not Yet Shown in Paris at Annely Juda Fine Art in the West End. Also in this show is the first British presentation of The Moon Room, Hockney's iPad renderings of the surroundings of his Normandy home by night, which we caught a glimpse of in Rouen last year. Until February 28 (after which there's more Hockney at the Serpentine Galleries from mid-March).   

The main winter exhibition at Chichester's Pallant House Gallery is a retrospective of the work of William Nicholson (1872-1949), the first major show about him in over 20 years. Nicholson, head of a renowned artistic family, was known for still lifes, portraits, landscapes, posters and book illustrations, and the curators promise rarely seen works. November 22 to May 10. 

At Charleston Farmhouse in East Sussex, they're staging the first major exhibition in 25 years dedicated to Roger Fry as a painter. Best known as a critic, writer and curator, Fry was instrumental in bringing Post-Impressionism to Britain just before World War I, shaking up the art world on this side of the Channel. This show concentrates, though, on his own artistic output, particularly from his time in Paris in the 1920s. November 15 to March 15. 

Over in Suffolk, Gainsborough's House in Sudbury is examining the relationship with the county of a very different artist: Stanley Spencer. Starting on November 15, Love & Landscape: Stanley Spencer in Suffolk focuses on Spencer's trips there in the 1920s and 30s; he married his first wife, Hilda Carline, in Suffolk in 1925. This show continues until March 22, after which it moves to the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham, Berkshire, starting in April.

Finnish painters from the late 19th and early 20th centuries: There's been a series of exhibitions featuring them in western Europe over the past few years, and the latest to get a retrospective is Pekka Halonen at the Petit Palais in Paris. He called himself the "Painter of Snow". This show runs from November 4 to February 22, after which it moves to the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede in the eastern Netherlands and then, next September, to Ordrupgaard near Copenhagen.

 

One of the most compelling motifs in French painting since the 19th century has been the spectacular cliffs around the bay in the Normandy fishing village and holiday resort of Etretat. Stunning in real life, stunning on canvas. What a fantastic subject for an exhibition, but you'll have to head south to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon for Etretat, Beyond the Cliffs: Courbet, Monet, Matisse from November 29 to March 1. And then from mid-March, at the Städel in Frankfurt. 

Meanwhile, in western France, they're preparing for the squally showers coming in off the Atlantic. In the Rain is the big winter exhibition at the Musée d'arts in Nantes from November 7 to March 1, looking at how precipitation became a favoured subject for painters, photographers and filmmakers. Almost 150 works, and Turner, Pissaro, Tissot and Caillebotte are among the artists featured. This show is due to move on to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen in 2026, though there's no mention of it on their website as yet. 

If you've been unable to make it to the centenary Surrealism exhibition that's been doing the rounds of Brussels, Paris, Madrid and Hamburg in various guises, and you're on the eastern seaboard of the United States this winter, you've one last chance. Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100 opens at the Philadelphia Art Museum on November 8, featuring around 200 works by more than 70 artists, among them René Magritte and Salvador Dalí, Dorothea Tanning and Leonora Carrington. Until February 16. 

Last chance to see....

You'll have to be quick if you want to catch the last weekend of Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists at the Pallant in Chichester, which ends on November 2. It's a big, wide-ranging show with lots to discover. 

And in Surrey, November 9 is the last day for Scented Visions: Smell in Art 1850-1915 at the Watts Gallery, near Guildford. Explore Pre-Raphaelite art in a new way....

Images

JMW Turner (1775-1851), The Passage of Mount St Gothard from the centre of Teufels Broch (Devil’s Bridge), 1804. © Abbot Hall, Kendal (Lakeland Arts Trust)
Anna Ancher (1859-1935), The Harvesters, 1905, Courtesy of Skagens Museum
Stanley Spencer (1891-1959), Southwold, 1937, Aberdeen Art Gallery. © Estate of Stanley Spencer; Image provided by Aberdeen City Council (Archives, Gallery & Museums Collection)
Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), Rue de Paris, Temps de pluie, 1877, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris. Photo: © Musée Marmottan Monet/Studio Christian Baraja SLB
GF Watts (1817-1904), Ellen Terry (Choosing), 1864, National Portrait Gallery, London. © National Portrait Gallery