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...
The old adage that a picture paints a thousand words is only true if you know the language being spoken. Take the Victorians; how many of their painted images appear to us at first glance so prim and proper, even twee. But beneath those buttoned-up, straight-laced exteriors, there lurks a deep, concealed well of emotion. To break through to the real significance, you need to translate the signs, decode the symbols whose meanings are no longer obvious to us. What are they all trying to tell us, those ladies in bonnets, those cute animals, those flowers and climbing plants that you've seen when wandering through a room of Victorian paintings in a provincial museum? You can find out in Telling Tales: The Story of Victorian Narrative Art at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum in Bournemouth, an exhibition that reveals that British 19th-century art is as full of hidden meanings as those Dutch Golden Age interiors we love so much. There are no really big names i...