What a lot of new exhibitions this October! We list well over 20 across Europe below -- many more than usual -- and have still had to leave out quite a few that we'd mention in most other months in order to keep this post to a reasonable length. Let's start at the Royal Academy in London with deep blue seas, cloudless skies, intense light and the heat of the sun. From October 2 to January 31, you can experience the excitement Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso and many others felt while Painting the French Riviera . The exhibition features more than 160 exhibits from the 1870s to the 1960s, and a version of the show travels on to the Cleveland Museum of Art in March. Hmm, Renoir. Now perhaps seen as the most chocolate-boxy of the Impressionists, but without doubt the creator of some of the most recognisable images in French art of the late 19th century. Well worth stealing , and clearly the National Gallery is on to a winner with its Renoir and Love ex...
You can go to any number of exhibitions of late 19th-century Western artists -- Whistler , van Gogh , Vuillard to name just three -- and see how their work was significantly influenced by Japanese prints, which presented a radically different way of looking at things from a country that had just opened up to the outside world. But don't imagine that the traffic was only one-way. Japanese artists came West, and you can see some of the results of the fusion in Yoshida: Three Generations of Japanese Printmaking at Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London. The story starts in 1900, when Hiroshi Yoshida and a fellow Japanese artist were in London during a lengthy tour of America and Europe. The first time they attempted to visit the Dulwich gallery, on May 24, a policeman told them it didn't exist. They finally made it at their third attempt five days later, though Hiroshi had to leave his camera at the entrance, and their names are recorded in the visitor'...