He's just made the highest-rating arts show. Can you tell who it is yet?

With one programme on Vincent Van Gogh, Rolf Harris appears to have done more to interest the masses in art than any of the more revered broadcasters who have tackled the subject on television.

The Australian painter, musician and presenter attracted 6.8 million viewers to the first episode of his series on great artists last Sunday, the highest rating for a programme on the visual arts. The figures put in the shade landmark series such as Renaissance presented by Andrew Graham-Dixon, and American Visions, the overview of American art by the great Australian critic Robert Hughes.

Delighted BBC1 executives, who were accused of dumbing down when the series, Rolf on Art, was announced, said the success vindicated their desire to put family-friendly arts shows on peak-time television.

Lorraine Heggessey, the BBC1 controller, said: "The aim of the series was for Rolf to introduce a wider audience to art and to inspire them to take this interest further. I'm thrilled that a programme about Van Gogh was enjoyed by nearly seven million viewers."

Harris, whose earlier artistic forays for the BBC included a graphic interpretation of Chuck Berry's hit "My Ding-A-Ling" on Top of the Pops, was said to be equally thrilled.

In the show, the first of four, Harris visited Auvers near Paris to paint the church that Van Gogh had studied 110 years before and attempted a quick self-portrait in the great master's bold style. He also encouraged a group of enthusiastic art class painters to try their own version of the sunflowers paintings.

On Sunday he repeats the exercise with Degas before the series is completed with Monet and Gauguin.

The current method of recording television figures dates from only 1993, but the BBC believes the programme's success puts it among the most popular arts programmes of all time. Since the time of Kenneth Clark's classic series, Civilisation, the subject has often mustered audiences of fewer than one million.

A television insider said: "There is no such thing as making a popular programme on high art. If the BBC calls this an arts programme, they'll bring a whole heap of opprobrium down on their heads."

Melvyn Bragg, the presenter of ITV's The South Bank Show, accused BBC1 of "dereliction of duty" for failing to take the arts seriously. But although Harris, 71, may not be to everyone's taste, he was trained at an art school in London and has exhibited at the Royal Academy.

For a more traditional approach to the arts, Channel 5 is screening a 14-part series on the history of Western art – Great Artists, presented by Tim Marlow.