Filmed in close collaboration with Tate Britain, this production accompanies the first major Whistler retrospective there in three decades.

Bringing together celebrated masterpieces and rarely seen works, the exhibition offers a chance to reconsider an artist whose influence continues to shape pmodern painting. James McNeill Whistler was one of the great artistic provocatuers of the 19th century, challenging Victorian conventions with his bold ideas about beauty, colour and artistic freedom.

A contemporary of the impressionists and admired by Manet and Van Goch, he sought to treat painting like music, giving works titles such as "arrangements", "harmonies" and "nocturnes".

His most famolus painting, Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1 (1871) better known as Whistler's Mother, has become one of the world's most recognisable images. 

Director David Bickerstaff takes us beyond the gallery walls, combining the artworks with expert insight and Whistler's unconventional life story. 

Visually rich and packed with detail, it offers and engaging view of an artist who insisted that art should follow its own rules. 

(Chris Coetsee)