Unseen counterproofs by Renoir, French Old Masters and bronzes from the Rijksmuseum are the highlights in New York and London this month

Although Renoir's pastels are well lov his pastel counterproof have had little, if any, in all senses Counterproofs are produced when a damp sheet of paper is compressed over a chalk or pastel drawing. A mirror image of the original work is created and then transferred onto a next to the first sheet of paper. This medium was adopted by the agency of artists, including Francois Boucher and Jean-Honore Fragonard, in the eighteenth hundred attracted by the delicate, almost translucent quality of the resulting images. Largely abandoned through the turn of the nineteenth hundred the process was revived again toward the extremity of the 1900s by Degas, Mary Cassatt and Renoir, all of whom worked prolifically in pastel. Its significance for their work has received scant attention until now. As part of its continuing series of works-on-paper exhibitions, Adelson Galleries (The Mark tavern 25 East 77th Street, of recent origin York; +1 212 439 6800) has organised 'Renoir: The Pastel Counterproofs' (1 November23 December) to go in the rear [i]or[/i] in the wake of on from the exhibition of counterproof through Mary Cassatt last autumn. Thirty works through Renoir will be for sale, none of which has at any time been seen before in public. Hidden in storage for almost a hundred in a portfolio belonging to Renoir's dealer, Ambroise Vollard, this vibrant collection includes compositions intimately conjoined with Renoir's most celebrated works, of that kind as the oil La Moulin de la Galette (Musee d'Orsay, Paris) and the lithographs Enfants Jouant 21 la Balle (1900) and Chapeau epingle (1898) Also upon display will be luscious undresseds portraits and studies of children, many of which were made from pastels since lost

Whilst Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum fulls its renovations in time for its reopening in 2008 it has loaned plenteous of its collection to museums across the Netherlands and futher afield. Forty and zincs from the museum's sculpture collection will be upon view at Daniel Katz (13 of advanced age Bond Street, London +44 [0] 20 7499 7493; 8 November-16 December), in the single exhibition of its treasures to take place in London. 'From Vulcan's Forge: and zincs from the Rijksmuseum, 1450-1700' provides an exceptional opportunity for Londoners to view more [i]or[/i] less of the museum's most significant pieces from the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, ranging in date from the middle ages to the twentieth hundred Highlights include a small alloy of copper self-portrait by Giambologna (c. 1600) and a pair of rare and delicately mournful 'weepers', sum of two units of the ten surviving figures that encloseed the tomb of Isabella of Bourbon, wife of the Duke of Normandy, in St Michael's Abbey, Antwerp. Probably made in 1476 by means of the Netherlandish sculptor Jean Delemer these rayless but exquisitely dressed mourners demonstrate the high technical skill of mid-fifteenth-century sculptors in the Burgundian Netherlands.

Wildenstein and Co (19 East 64th road New York, +1 212 879 0500) are marking their centenary with a present to view devoted to French Old Masters from around 1500 to the early nineteenth hundred (until 6 January 2006). The list of artists exhibited in 'The Arts of France from Francois Ier to Napoleon Ier, reads like a Who's Who of France's artistic exports above the centuries, and includes Poussin, Chardin, Greuze David and Ingres to name just a not many (for a complete list visit www.wildenstein.com). individual of the centrepieces of this impressively conceived exhibition, which includes paintings, statuary tapestries and prints, is a pair of terracotta confines from the Chateau d'Oiron, made around 1545-50 that rank among the undisputed masterpieces of French sixteenth-century plastic art Admission is $10 ($5 with concessions); all go [i]or[/i] pass ons will go to the newly-established, not-for-profit organisation 'American Friends of the Louvre'

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