DON’T MISS

Gathering under one marquee’d roof in the grounds of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow Contemporary Art Fair opens this weekend with art for every budget from £50 to more than £10,000. There are established names as well as young graduates exhibiting, with galleries from all over Scotland bringing a selection of their artists in original works and prints, as well as unique pieces from the Scottish Furniture Makers Association. There are chances to meet some of the artists, with many new pieces commissioned for the fair.

Glasgow Contemporary Art Fair, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, www.gcaf.co.uk, today 10am-5.30pm, tomorrow 10am-5pm, adults £4, children free

partnership took root. There are paintings and drawings from his time in Padua, where he was encouraged to go by Smith during the War of Austrian Succession (1740-48) when few Grand Tourists got to Venice, and works including his large-scale paintings depicting the entire length of the Grand Canal, with superb technical prowess in use of light and detail.

Alongside these are works by his fellow Venetian contemporaries, fleshing out the views of Venice and its art in the 18th century.

Artists include Marco Ricci, who, like Canaletto, was employed in theatrical and operatic stage setting during the Venetian carnival, and Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, who drew character drawings of Venetians.

There are hugely detailed views of Venice, full of fascinating detail which, as Whitaker points out, were in many ways works of the imagination as well as of the eye, for Canaletto often took liberties with perspective and reality, not least in his “capriccios”.

“People still think he just painted what he saw, and yet all the time he manipulated his perspective, had two views in one painting if it helped, removed buildings. Sometimes he’d straighten out the curves of the canal to show more of the view. He took reality and created a work of art.

“People say he is not imaginative, but in his capriccios his imagination is there. None of his works are prosaic – he worked both with superb technical skill and with his mind.”

Canaletto and the Art of Venice, The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Canongate, The Royal Mile, Edinburgh, 0303 123 7306, www.royalcollection.org.uk, until 21 October, daily, 9.30am-6pm (last admission 5pm), adult £7.20, concessions available