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...
A couple of weeks ago, we found ourselves getting increasingly exasperated by a late Victorian painting superstar, Edward Burne-Jones , in a show at Tate Britain that was full of knights in shining armour and damsels in distress. But British art was getting more modern. In the 1870s, James McNeill Whistler was already "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." And then a couple of years later, William Stott of Oldham came along. William Stott? Not exactly a household name, but he did paint one rather influential picture that's seen as key in the move to Impressionism and naturalism in British art in the 1880s. It's called Le Passeur (The Ferryman) , and it was bought by the Tate last year for £1.5 million. This beautiful work is now touring the country, and it's currently at Southampton City Art Gallery in a small but very well done (and free) exhibition called Beneath the Surface . It's well worth seeing. Confusingly, there seem to have been th...