LONDON, UK.- A record 21,000 tickets have been sold for the Turner Whistler Monet exhibition at London's Tate Britain gallery. The exhibition opens on Thursday. The previous advance ticket sales record was 13,500 for the Hopper exhibition last year. The show has already attracted more than 500,000 visitors during its time in Paris.

JMW Turner, James McNeill Whistler and Claude Monet each changed the course of landscape painting. Whistler and Monet were friends and both initially acknowledged the profound influence of Turner, adopting and working their own variations on themes developed by their artistic predecessor. Turner’s atmospheric effects gave rise to Whistler’s Thames Nocturnes, and both Turner and Whistler informed Monet’s revolutionary paintings that went on to inspire the term Impressionism.

This exceptional exhibition focuses on views of the River Thames, the Seine and the city and lagoon of Venice – a rare opportunity to see works which were highly controversial in their own day but are now seen as some of the most poetic and evocative images ever produced.

Organised by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Tate Britain and the Réunion des musées Nationaux and musée d'Orsay.