GIMP image window is blank

Problem

Many times when I open an image in GIMP, using Open With in the file explorer, GIMP shows an empty image window. Sometimes, this window is not just blank, but transparent and also flickers. This affects only the image window. The toolbox and filters window are rendered correctly.

Solution

Going by Google, this seems to be a problem that affects only me. No one else seems to be facing this problem. Removing the ~/.gimp-2.8 directory did not help.

The hack that I discovered is that if I select multiple images and then do a Open With on them then GIMP opens all of them correctly. No blank image window!

Tried with: GIMP 2.8 and Ubuntu 14.04