The opening of a new exhibition in the gilded halls of the Royal Academy of Arts attended by everyone from the striking HRH Crown Princess Mary of Denmark to Michael Palin is hardly a fringe event. But then again, it would be hard to guess what Vilhelm Hammershoi (1864-1916) - a notoriously reserved Danish fin-de-(19th)siecle painter whose muted interiors, empty exteriors and grey tones (Ibsen on canvas) were rejected for prizes by the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts - would have made of this reception. It is in honour of 60 of his paintings, under the title Vilhelm Hammershoi: The Poetry of Silence. The exhibition will remain at the Royal Academy until 7 September 08. Tonight stockbrokers mingle with Royal Academicians - in medals and velvet jackets - sip wine and gossip. There's an obligatory harpist in the corner; smells from a startling collection of fish and nibbles fill the glass lift up to the exhibition; and neatly-dressed girls offer things on sticks.

Guests include Her Royal Highness Princess Benedikte of Denmark, His Excellency Birger Riis-Jørgensen the Danish Ambassador to the UK, Brian Mikkelsen the Danish Minister for Culture. Hammershoi, the 'quiet subtle Dane' (as wild-child-architect-turned-Royal-Academy-President Sir Nicholas Grimshaw CBE describes him in his opening speech), has, after a century of obscurity, taken centre-stage.

Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mary of Denmark opens the reception in cool and husky tones. She describes how Hammershoi possessed a particular fondness for Britain, its grey skies and melancholy reminding him of Copenhagen. Indeed, London and Rome were the only cities outside Denmark which he ever painted. Drawings of the British Museum, inside and out, are included in this exhibition.

Like the gaudy pictures of Gaugin (1848-1903) and Matisse (1869-1954) in his own time, the clothes of people present tonight rather overshadow those in Hammershoi's works - from the red jacket belonging to a venerable footman announcing each person's arrival up the marble entrance staircase, to a purple-skullcap-and-feather hat on one particularly noticeable head. Brightly-dressed real women stand side-by-side with those in Hammershoi's paintings, the painted ones with a still and puritanical calm. They present a mirror of opposites to the outside world, posing with backs nearly always turned and heads bent, so that the only light comes from their white, curved necks.

Michael Palin says he has been a fan of Hammershoi since finding a book about him in a second-hand bookshop in Paris. He made a TV documentary on the artist in 2005. With his familiar wit and good nature, Palin speaks of the 'powerful sense of stillness' in the work, and how in today's bustling, high-tech high-speed times, Hammershoi provides a 'beguiling picture of restraint', requiring looking closely at a few things. His, Palin suggests, was 'the first recorded instance of modesty mania'.

It is not easy to follow a national treasure and former Monty Python man, so it is a little unfair to give this duty to the exhibition's sponsor, pharmaceutical company Novo Nordis. Head of the UK office Viggo Birch delivers a speech later described as like listening to a church sermon, although he does try to throw a few jokes in, and a voice in the audience can be heard after one of them whispering optimistically 'Well, that's funny'. Perhaps, however, this is the most fitting tribute of the evening to Hammershoi who lived quietly and - as even the programme-notes confess - uneventfully, with his wife Ida until his early death from throat cancer in 1916.

The collection will move to The National Museum of Western Arts in Tokyo when it leaves London in September. Tickets to view Vilhelm Hammershoi: The Poetry of Silence cost up to £8 and are available by telephone, 0870 8488484, or online at https://ratickets.org.uk/welcome.asp. More information at the UK Royal Danish Embassy website - http://www.amblondon.um.dk/en