Victorian London on show as captured by Whistler

The first exhibition dedicated to scenes of London and the Thames by US-born painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler will be held next year.

The Dulwich Picture Gallery is to focus on Whistler next October, continuing its tradition of presenting shows on American artists. It will include paintings, etchings and drawings produced during the artist’s several periods of residence in Victorian London.

Gallery director Ian Dejardin said: “There have been great shows but never been one that focuses on his London output. But he was here for most of his professional life.”

Next year will see the gallery transformed, with half its permanent collection removed to host an exhibition on Spanish Baroque painter Bartolomé Estéban Murillo.

The gallery will resemble a church with a giant altarpiece for the show, which opens in February, to explore Murillo’s relationship with his friend and patron, Justino De Neve, a canon of Seville cathedral.

Mr Dejardin said: “Our founders collected Murillo in large quantities and British art developed in a particular way because of that because artists copied the great Murillos in Dulwich.”

A third exhibition, A Crisis of Brilliance, will focus on the pre-First World War generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, including Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer, and how they were affected by the war.