THE retrospective of the paintings of Jack Vettriano has finished its record-breaking run, with the final day seeing queues stretching through the Kelvin-grove Art Gallery and Museum.
Peak times at the Glasgow attraction saw visitors having to wait around 40 minutes to view the Scottish artist's work. A total of 2500 people attended on Saturday, with larger numbers expected to have passed through the doors yesterday. The museum extended the opening times for the last day of the exhibition, giving the public until 8pm to view the famed artwork.
More than 130,000 visitors came to Kelvingrove for the 22-week run, making it the most visited art exhibition ever to go on display at the museum.
Victor and Colette Clews travelled from Birmingham to see the exhibition on its final day.
Mr Clews, 70, said: "We've been collecting some of his limited edition prints for about 12 years now. His work is always interesting.
Ms Clews, 50, added: "I have been looking forward to this for a long time.
"We have some of his work in prints - we absolutely love his work. To be honest, we didn't realise how big the queues were going to be, but I know it will be worth it.
"The time constraints of work, and travelling here, meant this was really the first, and only chance, we would get to see his work."
John Butcher, 31, of Ayrshire, said he had come to see the paintings after friends had recommended it. He said: "We are really here just to see the paintings and learn a few of the stories behind them."
Jim Murphy, 63, from Dumbarton, added: "I come to quite a few exhibitions, and I'd say this is one of the busiest I've been to.
"All the large exhibitions generate good public interest, which can only be good for Glasgow as a whole."
Vettriano's success exceeded that of the Glasgow Boys exhibition, which attracted 123,289 visitors in 2010.
The artist, who recently moved back to Scotland from England, said: "I was astonished and very flattered to find out that my retrospective exhibition has received a record-breaking number of visitors.
"From the very outset, I have been treated with enormous warmth and appreciation by the management and staff of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and I am deeply touched to hear that their enthusiasm has been echoed by so many of the visitors to my exhibition, during its five-month run.
"I am also hugely indebted to the collectors of my work, who so generously loaned their paintings for this retrospective. Exhibiting in such majestic surroundings as Kelvingrove has been a great honour."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article