The Innocents (1993) Bad Boy, Good Girl (1994) After The Thrill Is Gone (1994) And So to Bed (1996) The Longing (1997) Dance Me to the End of Love (1998)
Jack VettrianoOBE (born Jack Hoggan, 17 November 1951[2]) is a Scottish painter. His 1992 painting The Singing Butler became a best-selling image in Britain.
Early life
Jack Vettriano was born and grew up in the industrial seaside town of Methil, Fife. He was raised in poverty;[2] he lived with his mother, father and older brother in a spartan miner's house, sharing a bed with his brother and wearing hand-me-down clothes. From the age of 10, his father sent him out delivering papers and milk, cleaning windows and picking potatoes – any job that would earn money. His father took half his earnings.[3]
Vettriano left school at 16 and later became an apprentice mining engineer. For a short time in the late 1960s, he had a summer job as a bingo caller at the Beachcomber Amusements on Leven Promenade.[2] Vettriano took up painting as a hobby in the 1970s, when a girlfriend bought him a set of watercolours for his 21st birthday.[4][2] His earliest paintings, under his birth name "Jack Hoggan", were copies or pastiches of impressionist paintings;[2][5] his first painting was a copy of Claude Monet's Poppy Fields.[1][6] Much of his influence came from studying paintings at the Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery. In 1984, Vettriano first submitted his work to the Shell-sponsored art exhibition in the museum.[7]
In 1987, when he was 36, Vettriano left his wife Gail, seeking to emulate Paul Gauguin. He quit his job in educational research and moved to Edinburgh where he adopted his mother's maiden name.[2] He applied to study Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh, but his portfolio was rejected.[8]
In 1988,[2] Vettriano submitted two canvases for the Royal Scottish Academy annual show.[2] Both paintings sold on the first day[2] and Vettriano was approached by several galleries.[9] Further exhibitions followed in Edinburgh, London, Hong Kong and Johannesburg. In November 1999, Vettriano's work was shown for the first time in New York City, when 21 paintings were displayed at The International 20th Century Arts Fair at The Armory. More than 40 collectors from the UK flew out for the event and 20 paintings were sold on the opening night.[10]
In 1996 Sir Terence Conran commissioned Vettriano to create a series of paintings for his new Bluebird Gastrodome in London. The seven paintings, inspired by the life of Sir Malcolm Campbell, hung there for 10 years. Heartbreak Publishing, Vettriano's own publishing company, produced a boxed set featuring signed, limited-edition prints of all seven paintings to mark the 75th anniversary of Campbell's final World Land Speed Record. The Bluebird paintings were auctioned by Sotheby's at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire on 30 August 2007 and made more than £1m in all: the most expensive was Bluebird at Bonneville, bought for £468,000.[11]
Prices and values
His easel paintings cost between £48,000 and £195,000 new.[12] According to The Guardian he earns £500,000 a year in print royalties.[13] Vettriano's 1992 painting, The Singing Butler, has been the best-selling image in Britain.[12] On 21 April 2004 the original canvas of The Singing Butler sold at auction for £744,500. It had been rejected in 1992 by the Royal Academy summer exhibition.[14] The composition for the painting, as discovered by Scottish designer Sandy Robb,[15] had been sourced from the Illustrator’s Figure Reference Manual.[15]
In April 2010, seven out of ten paintings by Vettriano failed to sell at Sotheby's spring auction of Scottish pictures. Those that sold did so for half their previous prices. Art experts suggested that the monetary value of Vettriano's works needed reassessing.[11]
Studios and publishing
Vettriano has studios in Scotland and London. He was represented by the Portland Gallery, London from 1993 to 2007, and counts Jack Nicholson, Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Tim Rice and Robbie Coltrane amongst his collectors.[4] To date, five books have been published about Vettriano, the most recent of which, Studio Life, was published in March 2008. In February 2009, Vettriano launched Heartbreak Publishing[12] and his own London gallery, also called Heartbreak, which exclusively represents him,[16] and also promotes younger artists.[12]
In March 2010, Days of Wine And Roses was opened by Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond at the Kirkcaldy Museum. The exhibition then transferred to Vettriano's gallery in London.[17]
Awards and honours
Vettriano received an Order of the British Empire (OBE) award for Services to Visual Arts during a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on Thursday 27 November 2003.[18][19]
On 24 March 2010, Sir Jackie Stewart presented Vettriano with the Great Scot of the Year award.[20] The award ceremony was held at the Boisdale Club in London. The award led MSP Ted Brocklebank to file a motion in parliament calling for Vettriano's contribution to Scottish culture to be recognised.[21][22]
In February 2011, it was announced that Vettriano's self-portrait The Weight would be displayed at the re-opened Scottish National Portrait Gallery from November 2011, the first time he had exhibited at a national gallery.[23] Deputy director Nicola Kalinsky said Vettriano was "a figure we have wanted on our wall for a while for obvious reasons".[24] First Minister, Alex Salmond said of Vettriano, "He is a wonderful artist of considerable talent and achievement and this is a magnificent tribute to the special place he holds in the hearts of people in Scotland."[25]
In May 2011, "The Ballroom Spy" exhibition opened at Vettriano's gallery; Heartbreak a new exhibition by Vettriano in collaboration with the photographer, Jeanette Jones was also scheduled.[26] In July 2011, the exhibition transferred to the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, which was viewed as a controversial choice by many.[27][28]
In September 2013, a major exhibition, Jack Vettriano: A Retrospective, opened at Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. It featured over 100 works and ran until 23 February 2014.[32]
In 2015, a private collection of 12 works by Vettriano raised a total of £837,900 at an auction in Edinburgh.[33]
Commissions
In January 2012, menswear brand Stefano Ricci launched its Spring Summer 2012 collection with a campaign inspired by the work of Jack Vettriano. The SS 2012 catalogue, entitled Stefano Ricci – a tribute to Vettriano, featured images by Vettriano and photographic re-interpretations shot by Fredi Marcarini featuring clothes and accessories from the Ricci 2012 collection. A short film about the 2012 Vettriano campaign commemorated the collaboration.[34]
In 2017, he was one of three artists commissioned to paint portraits of Scottish comedian Billy Connolly to celebrate Connolly's 75th birthday.[35] These were then put on display in Glasgow's People's Gallery, while the images were transferred to murals in the centre of Glasgow. Vettriano's mural is located in Dixon Street, off St Enoch Square.[36] It was the subject of a BBC Scotland documentary first broadcast on 14 June 2017.[37]
In 2018, Worthing's "Room with a View" gallery showcased 30 Vettriano paintings.[38] Art dealer Jane Hill stated that Vettriano is "self-taught which I admire immensely. He has really pulled himself up from the depth of nowhere."[38]
Artistic style
Vettriano is a self-taught artist in drawing and perspective who manipulates paint in veiled glazes and meaningful shadows.[39] Vettriano's style has been compared to those of Hopper and Sickert, and his scudded beaches to those of Boudin.[40] In many of his paintings, there is a hidden narrative, in enigmatic compositions, a starting point for dozens of short stories.[41]
Criticism
According to The Daily Telegraph he has been described as the Jeffrey Archer of the art world, a purveyor of "badly conceived soft porn",[42] and a painter of "dim erotica".[43] According to Vanity Fair, critics say Jack Vettriano paints brainless erotica.[12] Sandy Moffat, head of drawing and painting at Glasgow School of Art, said: "He can’t paint, he just colours in."[44]The Guardian's art critic Jonathan Jones, described Vettriano's paintings as a group as "brainless" and said Vettriano "is not even an artist."[12]Richard Calvocoressi, at the time director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, said: "I’d be more than happy to say that we think him an indifferent painter and that he is very low down our list of priorities (whether or not we can afford his work, which at the moment we obviously can’t). His 'popularity' rests on cheap commercial reproductions of his paintings."[45]
In 2013 in The Guardian, art critic Jonathan Jones wrote: "Vettriano fixes on fetishistic, stylish objects and paints them with a slick, empty panache" and "The world of Jack Vettriano is a crass male fantasy that might have come straight out of Money by Martin Amis".[46]
In The Scotsman, George Kerevan wrote "He suffers all the same criticisms of the early French Impressionists: mere wallpaper, too simplistic in execution and subject, too obviously erotic."[47] Alice Jones wrote in The Independent that Vettriano has been labelled a chauvinist whose "women are sexual objects, frequently half naked and vulnerable, always in stockings and stilettos."[8] Regarding the criticism, sculptor David Mach has said: "If he was a fashion designer Jack would be right up there. It’s all just art world snobbery. Anyway, who cares, he probably makes more money than Damien Hirst anyway."[44]
In October 2005, after the original of The Singing Butler sold for £740,000, it came to light that Vettriano had used the artists' reference manual The Illustrator's Figure Reference Manual to form his figures,[48][15] using Irish actress Orla Brady for the 'lady in red.'[49]
Collaborations
Alongside fellow Fifer, author Ian Rankin, Vettriano put in a cameo appearance in a video with Scottish indie band Saint Jude's Infirmary made for BBC Scotland's The Music Show. The video was filmed on Portobello Beach in Edinburgh and included visual references to two of Vettriano's most famous paintings, Elegy for a Dead Admiral and The Singing Butler.[50] The lyrics of the track Goodbye Jack Vettriano were written by band member Grant Campbell after seeing a Vettriano print on a pub wall in Rotterdam. Vettriano became a fan of the band after hearing their first album, Happy Healthy Lucky Month, and was inspired to create a painting which featured as the cover of the band's second album, for which both Vettriano and Rankin contributed spoken word pieces.[50]
In May 2008, Vettriano collaborated with Sir Jackie Stewart, on a triptych of paintings entitled Tension, Timing, Triumph – Monaco 1971. The paintings were unveiled by Prince Albert of Monaco at a private reception at the Hôtel de Paris in Monaco on 21 May 2008. The originals hang in Stewart's private collection in the UK and the images have been published as a limited edition print.[51]
Following on from the previous year's event in Monaco, Vettriano was invited to create a series of paintings to celebrate the centenary of Tuiga, the Yacht Club de Monaco's flagship yacht, which was built on the Clyde. The paintings were first shown in an exhibition, Homage à Tuiga, in Monaco and were part of a touring exhibition that opened at the Kirkcaldy Museum in Fife in March 2010.[52]
Vettriano worked with the Italian photographer Fredi Marcarini, both on a series of photographs for the Homage à Tuiga exhibition and on a triptych of portrait shots.[53] In May 2011, Vettriano collaborated on the exhibition The Ballroom Spy with the photographer Jeanette Jones.[54]
In collaboration with fellow Fife native Stephen Anderson of Commercial Spirits, Vettriano launched Jack Vettriano Gin, a spirit product featuring four of Jack's paintings: The Singing Butler, Billy Boys, Along Came A Spider and A Kind of Loving.[55] The brand was launched at the Forth Floor Bar & Restaurant in collaboration with Louise Masson, GM of Harvey Nichols, Edinburgh with an auction of four signed giclée paintings raising over £7000 for charity[56] Bottle sets of #1, #2 and #3 were donated to the Lunch With an Old Bag, a charity auction on 7 September 2018 at Prestonfield House in Edinburgh
Philanthropy
In 2004 Vettriano set up a scholarship for University of St Andrews to fund a student who would not otherwise be able to attend university. The scholarship is awarded every four years. The endowment follows his financial contribution towards refurbishing the Students Association's Old Union Coffee Bar in 2002 and his involvement in student fashion shows. He was made a Doctor of Letters by the university.[57]
Vettriano has donated several works of art to be sold in aid of charities, including the Terrence Higgins Trust.[58] In September 2001, Vettriano donated a painting, Beautiful Dreamer to a charity auction, which was held at Sotheby's in aid of Help the Hospices.[59] In 2008, a drawing he made of that subject sold at a charity auction in aid of the Oriel Plas Glyn-y-Weddw Gallery in Llanbedrog, North Wales in July, helping to keep the gallery open.[60]
Also in 2010, Vettriano helped to raise money for the conservation movement Elephant Family by participating in an auction of donated elephant sculptures and models. Vettriano's elephant, The Singing Butler Rides Again, was the highest bid-for lot, selling for £155,000.[63] Vettriano was also asked by First Minister, Alex Salmond to create his official Christmas card Let's Twist Again.[64] The original painting and limited-edition prints later sold at auction for the benefit of four Scottish charities, raising £86,000.[65]
Personal life
Divorced from his first wife, Vettriano divides his time between homes in London, Kirkcaldy, and Nice, France. In Kirkcaldy he lives in the boardroom section of the former Nairn linoleum factory, now converted into residential use.[66]
In November 2004, he was awarded the OBE. He claims he has drawn inspiration for his paintings from "25 years of sexual misbehaviour".[43] In 2010, he told The Independent: "I live in a world of heartbreak... I just seem to be more creative when I'm in some kind of emotional distress", adding "It's been four years of soul-searching – nicotine, alcohol, anti-depressants, temazepam".[8]
In 2010 Vettriano said about relationships, "Whenever someone stays for longer than two days, I get cabin fever" and that he loves shoe-shopping with women.[67]
He likes to gamble on horses, but only bets what he can afford to lose.[3] He has set up the Vettriano Trust, and plans to leave his money to it to do good work.[3]
In February 2012, Vettriano was convicted at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court of drink-driving and possession of amphetamine. He was banned from driving for 18 months and fined £800.[43][68] When stopped he told the police officer "You know who I am. We can sort this out."[69][70]
In 2022 he announced that he had two significantly younger East European muses who had helped him overcome cocaine and alcohol addiction and inspired him to paint again. One works as a waitress in an Edinburgh bistro, and he met the other at a sale in Nice. He explained to The Telegraph -
I can't go on dating sites. I can’t go clubbing. I can hardly bloody walk, never mind dance. So the opportunities to meet the opposite sex are really dwindling. But it goes a long way to say "oh, and by the way, look at my website". They see it's not just Joe Ordinary, which almost definitely helps.[71]
Jack Butler Yeats RHA was an Irish artist. Born into a family of impoverished Anglo-Irish landholders, his father was the painter John Butler Yeats, and his brother was the poet W. B. Yeats. Jack B. was born in London but was raised in County Sligo with his maternal grandparents, before returning to London in 1887 to live with his parents. Afterwards he travelled frequently between the two countries; while in Ireland he lived mainly in Greystones, County Wicklow and in Dublin city.
Peter Doig is a painter of Scottish nationality, but who spent a nomadic childhood between Trinidad, Canada, and Britain. He settled in Trinidad with his family between 2002 and 2021, when he moved back to London.
David Hockney is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The Scottish Colourists were a group of four painters, three from Edinburgh, whose Post-Impressionist work, though not universally recognised initially, came to have a formative influence on contemporary Scottish art and culture. The four artists, Francis Cadell, John Duncan Fergusson, Leslie Hunter and Samuel Peploe, were prolific painters spanning the turn of the twentieth century until the beginnings of World War II. While now banded as one group with a collective achievement and a common sense of British identity, it is a misnomer to believe their artwork or their painterly careers were heterogeneous.
Peter Howson OBE is a Scottish painter. He was a British official war artist in 1993 during the Bosnian War.
The Singing Butler is a 1992 oil-on-canvas painting made by Scottish artist Jack Vettriano in 1992. It sold at auction in 2004 for £744,500 which was the record at the time for any Scottish painting, and for any painting ever sold in Scotland. Reproductions of The Singing Butler make it the best-selling art print in the UK.
Orla Brady is an Irish theatre, television, and film actress born in Dublin. She started her career as a touring theatre performer and began appearing regularly in television roles in the 1990s. She has been nominated for several awards from the Irish Film & Television Academy for her television work. Major or recurring TV roles continued in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, with Brady appearing in over thirty series, limited series, or television movies up to the 2020s. This included her portrayal of two supporting characters in the CBS-Paramount+ series, Star Trek: Picard.
Samuel John Peploe was a Scottish Post-Impressionist painter, noted for his still life works and for being one of the group of four painters that became known as the Scottish Colourists. The other colourists were John Duncan Fergusson, Francis Cadell and Leslie Hunter.
George Leslie Hunter was a Scottish painter, regarded as one of the four artists of the Scottish Colourists group of painters. Christened simply George Hunter, he adopted the name Leslie in San Francisco, and Leslie Hunter became his professional name. Showing an aptitude for drawing at an early age, he was largely self-taught, receiving only elementary painting lessons from a family acquaintance. He spent fourteen years from the age of fifteen in the US, mainly in California. Hunter made an extended trip to Scotland, Paris and New York from 1903 to 1905. In 1906 he left San Francisco and returned to Scotland, painting and drawing there, notably in Fife and at Loch Lomond. Subsequently he travelled widely in Europe, especially in the South of France, but also in the Netherlands, the Pas de Calais and Italy. He also returned to New York in 1924 and 1928–1929.
John Henry Lorimer was a Scottish painter who worked on portraits and genre scenes of everyday life.
Alison Watt OBE FRSE RSA is a British painter who first came to national attention while still at college when she won the 1987 Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Kirkcaldy Galleries is the main museum, library and exhibition space in Kirkcaldy in Fife, Scotland.
Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, also known as V. S. Gaitonde, was an Indian painter. He was regarded as one of India's foremost abstract painters. Gaitonde received the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1971.
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Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino is a landscape by British artist Joseph Mallord William Turner completed in 1839. It is Turner's final painting of Rome and had been in the possession of the family of the 5th Earl of Rosebery since 1878, until the painting came to auction, 7 July 2010. It was bought by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and was subject to an export bar to allow a British gallery time to attempt to match the Getty's bid.
Derek Robertson RSW SSA SAA is a Scottish artist. One of the signature members of the Society of Animal Artists, he is known for his paintings of wildlife and landscapes, and for his poetic narrative work consisting of paintings, constructions and installations. He has been elected several times on the Council of the RSW and has written and presented 5 television programs about his work and the wildlife he portrays and has written 5 books about his art: The Mugdrum, Highland Sketchbook, A Studio Under The Sky, Otters, An Artist's Sketchbook, "Living Landscapes" and Puffins: An Artist's Sketchbook. His work has also illustrated many other publications.
Denis Frederic Neal Peploe was a Scottish artist and sculptor known for his landscapes.
The Great Tapestry of Scotland is one of the world's largest community arts projects, hand stitched by 1,000 people from across Scotland. It is made up of 160 linen panels and 300 miles of wool – enough to stretch the entire length of Scotland. It is now on permanent display in its own purpose-built gallery and visitor centre in the town of Galashiels in the heartland of the Scottish Borders.
Fife Contemporary Art & Craft (FCA&C) is a contemporary visual art and craft organisation based in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland. Its main activity is artist support and exhibitions.
Charles Harris is a British painter, art instructor and teacher.
Fallen Angels, edited by W. Gordon Smith, Pavilion Books, October 1999 ( ISBN978-1-86205-364-9).
Lovers and Other Strangers, text by Anthony Quinn, Pavilion Books on 30 October 2003 ( ISBN978-1-86205-630-5).
Jack Vettriano: A Life, text by Anthony Quinn, Pavilion Books on 25 October 2004 ( ISBN978-1-86205-646-6). (A reduced format version was published in 2007).
Studio Life, foreword by Ian Rankin, photographs by Jillian Edelstein, text by Tom Rawstorne, Pavilion Books on 28 March 2008 ( ISBN978-1-86205-743-2).
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