In the spectacular exhibition The Dutch in Paris 1789–1914, the Van Gogh Museum presents the French capital as seen through the eyes and hearts of eight Dutch artists: Van Spaendonck, Scheffer, Jongkind, Kaemmerer, Breitner, Van Gogh, Van Dongen and Mondrian. Their work – from large, iconic canvases to tiny pearls – is shown in this configuration for the first time along with work by their French contemporaries. At its heart is the inspiration Dutch artists found in Paris, their encounters with French artists and the impact this had on their art. The Dutch in Paris 1789–1914 (a collaboration with Paris Musées / Petit Palais and the RKD – The Netherlands Institute for Art History) showcases more than a hundred and twenty works, among them many loans from museums and private collections worldwide.

In the centenary year of the artist’s death, the Fitzwilliam Museum is staging a major exhibition of its wide-ranging holdings of works by Edgar Degas (1834-1917), the most extensive and representative in the UK. The Museum’s collections have been complemented by an outstanding group of over fifty loans from private and public collections throughout Europe and the United States, several of which are on public display for the first time. These include a group of paintings and drawings once belonging to the economist John Maynard Keynes, bought directly in 1918 and 1919 from Degas’s posthumous studio sales in Paris, against a backdrop of German bombardment during World War I. The remarkable breadth of works on display includes paintings, sculpture, drawings, pastels, etchings, monotypes, counterproofs and letters – some business-like, some heartrending – written by Degas to friends and associates. Prominen

A fascination with the spectacle, nightlife, and the tawdry side of celebrity culture is hardly a recent phenomenon. The artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864 – 1901) is famed for his images, created more than a century ago, of entertainers in the cabarets, dance halls, theaters and brothels of Paris. The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT, is presenting the major exhibition In the Limelight: Toulouse-Lautrec Portraits from the Herakleidon Museum, which showcases the artist’s portraits of the dancers, singers and other performers who became the icons of the Parisian nightlife in the late 19th century. Featuring 100 drawings, prints, and posters (approximately half of the Herakleidon Museum’s extensive collection of Toulouse-Lautrec works on paper), the exhibition explores the relationship between portraiture, caricature, and rise of the cult of celebrity in Belle Époque Paris. Lautrec wanted to show life as it is, not as it should