Jack Vettriano. Artist.

“The Singing Butler”.

Artist: Jack Vettriano.

Illustration: KING & McGAW

Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopædia,
unless stated otherwise.

Jack Vettriano OBE (born Jack Hoggan, 17 November 1951[2]) is a Scottish painter. His 1992 painting The Singing Butler became a best-selling image in Britain.

Jack Vettriano was born in St. Andrews in Fife[2], Scotland, and grew up in the industrial seaside town of Methil, about thirty minutes South of his birthplace. 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 ten, 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 sixteen and later became an apprentice mining engineer. For a time in the Late-1960s, he had a Summer job as a bingo caller at the Beachcomber Amusements on Leven Promenade.[2]

Illustration: HEARTBREAK PUBLISHING

Vettriano took up painting as a hobby in the 1970s, when a girlfriend bought him a set of watercolours for his twenty-first 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 thirty-six, 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]

Illustration: HEARTBREAK PUBLISHING

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 twenty-one paintings were displayed at The International 20th Century Arts Fair at The Armory. More than forty collectors from the UK flew out for the event and twenty 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 ten years. Heartbreak Publishing, Vettriano’s own publishing company, produced a boxed set featuring signed, limited-edition prints of all seven paintings to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of Campbell's final World Land Speed Record.

Illustration: HEARTBREAK PUBLISHING

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]

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]

“The Billy Boys”.

Artist: Jack Vettriano.

Illustration: KING & McGAW

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]

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]

“Ritual of Courtship”.

Artist: Jack Vettriano.

Illustration: LYON & TURNBULL

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] but still 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]

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]

“Anniversary Waltz”.

Artist: Jack Vettriano.

Illustration: HEARTBREAK PUBLISHING

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 February 2012, Vettriano’s most famous painting, The Singing Butler,[29] went on display at the Aberdeen Art Gallery as part of an exhibition entitled “From Van Gogh to Vettriano”.[30][31]

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 twelve works by Vettriano raised a total of £837,900 at an auction in Edinburgh.[33]

In January 2012, menswear brand Stefano Ricci launched its Spring Summer 2012 collection with a campaign inspired by the work of Jack Vettriano. The 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 seventy-fifth 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]

“Blue Blue”.

Artist: Jack Vettriano.

Illustration: HEARTBREAK PUBLISHING

In 2018, Worthing’s “Room With A View” gallery showcased thirty 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]

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]

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]

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.”[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]

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.

In 2004, Vettriano set up a scholarship for the 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]

“Dance Me To The End Of Love”.

Artist: Jack Vettriano.

Illustration: HEARTBREAK PUBLISHING

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]

Divorced from his first wife, Jack Vettriano divides his time between homes in London, Kirkcaldy and Nice, France. In 2004, he was awarded the OBE.

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]

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]