The Independent recommends: The Five Best Shows

Monet in the 20th Century (Royal Academy)

He lived until 1926. The gardens and lily ponds at Giverny dissolve into elemental visions: fiery lights, haze, liquid reflections, voids and depths. The strange last works of Impressionism (above). To 18 Apr

Portraits by Ingres (National Gallery)

Some of the most intense portraiture ever. Women: exquisite melanges of flesh and fabric, dreams of sex and money. To 25 Apr

Andreas Gursky (Serpentine Gallery)

Photographs 1994-98: Huge, wide-vision, high-finish, micro-detailed, digitally manipulated images of our everyday world. To 7 Mar

Oppe Watercolour Collection

(Whitworth Gallery, Manchester)

Classic and still fresh 18th- and 19th-century British watercolours, including Alexander Cozens, John Sell Cotman, Constable, and Francis Towne. To 5 Apr

Disasters of War

(Wolverhampton Art Gallery)

"I saw this" - three ages of European war through the etchings of Jacques Callot, Goya and Otto Dix. Visions from the blackest of times. To 20 Mar