Exhibition of the week

Renoir and Love
Joyful and sumptuous, yet realist and raw, Renoir’s impressionist paintings glow in this immaculate exhibition.
National Gallery, London, from 3 October until 31 January

Also showing

The 90s: Art and Fashion
The fin de siecle decade gets a fresh look that puts fashion alongside art to take us back to when Britannia thought it was cool.
Tate Britain, London, from 8 October until 14 February

Aphrodite: The Making of a Goddess
The ancient god of love and desire, often known by her Latin name Venus, returns on her shell in the art of Botticelli, Michelangelo Pistoletto and more.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, from 8 October until 11 April

Mike Nelson: Double Negative (The Clown)
Another soul-harrowing installation by the sculptor of urban labyrinths.
Modern Art Oxford, from 3 October until 11 April

Painting the French Riviera
There are masterpieces here by Cézanne, Picasso and Matisse, but it’s a weary slog and the beach is miles away.
Royal Academy, London, until 31 January

Image of the week

How much is that doggy in the window? Well, if it’s a rare painting of Hockney’s adored dachshund Stanley, you’re looking at an estimated £1.5m-£2.5m. The painting will be sold at auction on 14 October during the Frieze art fair, but anyone can see it for free at Christie’s in London from Thursday.

What we learned

Some art seems better when it’s broken

Balraj Khanna paints biomorphic blobs, candy-coloured galaxies and cosmic spectacle

Celeb set designer Es Devlin’s studio has a lot going on

A row has erupted over a Cairo mural depicting Tutankhamun with dark skin

A Van Gogh is up for grabs, alongside a Cézanne and a Monet as an ‘almost mythical’ private collection goes on sale

Masterpiece of the week

Fête Galante by Jean-Baptiste Pater, probably about 1721-5

People are picnicking on the grass, in a woody parkland that’s given extra mystery by classical sculptures and urns, even though a view through the trees reveals ordinary rural buildings rather than a great house. This is the ambiguous pleasure-world of the fête galante, a genre of painting invented by Pater’s teacher Antoine Watteau, in which lovers dance and talk and sometimes go off together into the woods, in an enigmatic, timeless and softly brushed fantasy realm. Pater is nothing like as poetic as Watteau, but still, you get the idea in this typical example of his work: women in silk dresses that catch the light and men in archaic, Renaissance-style costumes have escaped the cares of the city and the everyday to gather and celebrate love in this clearing under the gentle, feathery trees. Renoir revives this suggestive yet delicate genre in the much more material and solid setting of 19th-century Paris in his impressionist paintings.
National Gallery, London

Sign up to the Art Weekly newsletter

If you don’t already receive our regular roundup of art and design news via email, please sign up here.

Get in touch

If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email [email protected]