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...
This bust of Charles II in British Baroque: Power and Illusion at Tate Britain really does capture the essence of the Baroque -- extravagant, flamboyant, full of movement, full of drama. The Stuart King's head turns one way, his lace cravat swings in the other direction. Underneath, a swirl of drapery; on top, a wig that could almost be a coiled mass of snakes or a basketful of twisted pastries. It really is quite magnificent. This ostentatious concoction early on in the exhibition was the work of a sculptor for whom Charles never actually sat: French-born, Genoa-based Honoré Pelle. And indeed, though this is a show about how the largely Protestant British aristocracy dipped its toe into the very, very Catholic world of Baroque art in the late 17th and early 18th centuries over the reigns of the late Stuart monarchs, from Charles II to Anne, much of the work you'll see is by foreign artists, Italians, Germans and Dutch among them. And if there's one of those ruler...