The “secret” art collection amassed by Claude Monet, the father of Impressionism, went on display for the first time in Paris on Thursday, 90 years after the great painter’s death. French art historians spent four years tracking down the startling collection of work by contemporaries including Renoir, Cezanne, Pissarro and Delacroix that Monet secretly bought. “I am selfish. My collection is for myself only… and for a few friends,” the master once told journalists who called on him at his country home at Giverny in Normandy, whose remarkable gardens draw half a million visitors a year. “We knew really very little about the collection,” said Marianne Mathieu, one of the curators of the show at the Marmottan Monet Museum, which has brought together the bulk of the collection.

From 13 September 2017 to 14 January 2018, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt is presenting two outstanding artists – Henri Matisse (1869–1954) and Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) – in an exhibition that is the first in Germany to bring these key modernist masters together. At the heart of the special exhibition “Matisse – Bonnard: ‘Long Live Painting!’” is the friendship between the two French artists which lasted for over forty years. Both artists shared a preference for the same range of subjects: interiors, still lifes, landscapes and the female nude. With a selection of more than 120 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints, the exhibition opens a dialogue between Matisse and Bonnard and offers new perspectives on the development of the European avant-garde from the beginning of the twentieth century to the end of the Second World War. The selection of works is enriched by a series

Better a good neighbour than a distant friend, so the saying goes. During the autumn of 2017, the Mauritshuis tells the story of Flemish portraiture using a selection of the best Flemish portraits from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Antwerp. In the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium), the art of portrait painting came into full bloom during the period from 1400 to 1700. During these three centuries, noblemen and wealthy citizens had themselves immortalised by the best Flemish artists of their time. These portraits remain very impressive due to the outstanding way in which the sitters’ facial features and the character were memorialised in paint. The exhibition includes major works by Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling, Pieter Pourbus, Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck. Remarkably, almost all the sitters can be identified. This is why the exhibition will not only highlight what makes Flemish portraits so special, b