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There is a touch of fin de siècle about Europe's autumn exhibitions — the end of the 19th century, that is, not the 20th. Angst, absinthe and exotic dreams will be on display in a variety of major shows.

First off the mark in this decadent sequence will be Edvard Munch by Himself at London's Royal Academy of Arts (www.royalacademy.org.uk) until Dec. 11. This is a travelling show of self-portraits, including drawings and photographs, that has already been seen in Stockholm and Oslo.

Munch was of course the great visual master of Nordic gloom. The RA will have several of his best known images on view, and also many of his less celebrated late works. One question this cornucopia of angst will raise is: Did his talent survive the partial cure of his mental problems in 1909?

At Tate Britain (tate.org.uk), Degas, Sickert, Toulouse-Lautrec opened last week and will run to Jan. 15. This is another in the Tate's continuing series on English and French artists and what they had in common. In this case, the link is clear: both Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Walter Sickert revered Edgar Degas.

The big selling point is the inclusion of L'Absinthe, one of Degas's most sensational paintings. The show may do something to remind the world that Sickert was a major artist, not just — as American novelist Patricia Cornwell would have it — a potential Jack the Ripper. The Courtauld adds a footnote to these Franco-English interchanges with André Derain's brilliantly coloured Fauve picture of London dating from 1906-07, on show from Oct. 27 to Jan 22.

Over at Tate Modern, the big event is to be Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris (Nov. 3 to Feb. 5). Rousseau — sometimes known as Le Douanier because of his profession of customs official — was the most renowned outsider artist of all time. How many outsiders were feted by Picasso?

Rousseau was self-taught and his work has many of the mannerisms of naive or folk art, but it also had the scale, ambition and obsession with the big cats of a romantic master such as Delacroix. But the question the show will ask is how many Rousseau jungles make too many?

This year is the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the German Expressionist movement that called itself Die Brucke — the Bridge — which is commemorated at the Berlinische Galerie (berlinischegalerie.de), Berlin, by the substantial Brucke 1903-1913, with more than 200 works, running to Jan. 15.

At the Grand Palais (rmn.fr) in Paris, Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele, Moser, running until Jan. 23, covers equally emotional territory: anxiety, torment and eroticism from Freud's Vienna.

Side by side with those neurotic Austrians, the Grand Palais will also be fielding a fascinating-sounding survey of madness and creativity in art. Melancolie: Genie et Folie en Occident opened this week and runs to Jan. 16. Also in Paris, the Pompidou Centre (www.cnac-gp.fr) is staging the biggest ever retrospective of the craziest ever art movement, Dada, until Jan. 9.

The most famous of all deranged geniuses, Vincent van Gogh, naturally turns up in another intriguing-looking concept exhibition: Self-Portrait: Renaissance to Contemporary at the National Portrait Gallery, London (npg.org.uk), from Oct. 20 to Jan. 29. Along with Vincent, Frida Kahlo and Rembrandt, this will contain some less familiar and more up-to-date examples of artistic self-examination and exposure.

The major Old Master show of the season in Britain, without question, is going to be Rubens: From Italy to Antwerp 1600-16 at London's National Gallery (nationalgallery.org.uk) from Oct. 26 to Jan. 15. This will attempt to explain how Rubens became Rubens, following him from the age of 23 to 39. Half of that time he spent in Italy, where he succeeded in wowing the natives and absorbing the heritage of the Renaissance, without ceasing to be his Flemish self. The sheer fecundity and fleshiness of Rubens are too much for some people; but for those who love him, this should be a feast.

The same is true of the blockbuster Goya: Prophet of Modernism, which has already drawn long lines in Berlin and runs at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum (khm.at) from Oct. 18 to Jan. 8.

Non-European art is also well catered for in the next few months. China: The Three Emperors 1662-1795 (Nov. 12 to April 17), also at the Royal Academy of Arts, is another sweeping cultural survey: this time of 17th-century and 18th-century artifacts on loan from the Palace Museum, Beijing.

But will that period prove as rich and full of interest as the highly successful Turks at the RA earlier this year?

The British Museum (thebritishmuseum.ac.uk) is offering Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia until Jan. 8. BM exhibitions tend to be less than overwhelming for one simple reason — the galleries for temporary shows are too small. This show, however — with loans from the Louvre, the Persepolis Museum and the National Museum of Iran — is an exception.

Bloomberg