An international loan exhibition, Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice, has opened at The Burrell Collection to round off the highly successful Glasgow-wide celebrations for James McNeill Whistler who passed away 100 years ago.

Fifty exhibits - mostly rare and beautiful etchings and exquisite, vivid pastels - from private and public collections in Europe and America have been brought together in a unique show. They reveal the artist as an intensely hard-working craftsman with a great sympathy and rapport with people and a great love of the beautiful city of Venice.

When Whistler arrived in Venice he was broke and deeply depressed. When he left triumphantly with fifty etchings and a hundred gorgeous pastels he was ready to restart his career in the competitive art market of London and Paris.

The exhibition is set in a re-designed exhibition space at The Burrell. Blue-grey walls complement the etchings and lustrous prints that have a vigorous and precise level of detail. One etching has been enlarged to superhuman proportions for the entrance and reveals Whistler's amazing precision of draughtsmanship.

This etching provides a theme for the interactive room attached to the exhibition space for children of all ages. The room has spaces for dressing up, drawing, designing and solving an increasingly complex series of visual puzzles including a particularly fiendish problem-solving game of 'Spot the Difference'. The space was invaded during the Private View by The Director of the Hunterian, Dr Evelyn Silber and Curator, Dr Margaret MacDonald who were spotted wearing exotic masks and posing on a Venetian bridge (see picture).

The Lord Provost of Glasgow, Liz Cameron attended the Private View and generously hosted a civic dinner to thank lenders, curators, and Whistlerians including the Directors of the Hunterian and the Centre for Whistler Studies. The city, she said, had benefited greatly in terms of visitor numbers and press coverage from the series of events and shows city-wide throughout the year.

The curator of the exhibition is Dr Margaret MacDonald, Principal Research Fellow of the Centre for Whistler Studies at the University of Glasgow along with Muriel King, Manager of The Burrell Collection and her dedicated team.

Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice is showing at The Burrell Collection, Pollok Country Park, 2060 Pollokshaws Rd, Glasgow Tel: 0141 287 2550 or visit Burrell Collection. Open Monday-Thursday & Saturday 10am-5pm, Friday & Sunday 11am-5pm.

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First published: 7 November 2003