“Monet was the National Galleries’ big hit. You might have thought we knew Monet well enough, but no fewer than 170,000 people visited the Monet exhibition to get a fresh insight into his work. It was the biggest attendance ever for an exhibition in Edinburgh and it must be a comment on something that we have not been doing in between that the previous record of 120,000 visitors was held by the Epstein exhibition in Waverley Market more than 40 years ago.”