Jack Vettriano (1951–2025)

By Neil Cooper, 05.03.2025

Jack Vettriano, At The Party (c1990). The Fleming Collection

Jack Vettriano, who has died aged 73, was one of the most successful contemporary Scottish artists ever. His often erotically charged studies of brooding figures posed in scenes that seemed to draw from pulp fiction book covers and film noir stills sold in huge amounts. His 1992 painting, 'The Singing Butler', went at auction in 2004 for £744,500, at the time a record amount for any painting by a Scottish artist, and any painting ever sold in Scotland. It went on to become the best selling art print in the UK.

Celebrity collectors of Vettriano’s work include Jack Nicholson, Sir Alex Ferguson, Terence Conran and Tim Rice. Other fans included actor Robbie Coltrane and Scotland’s former First Minister, the late Alex Salmond. In 2010, Salmond used Vettriano’s painting, 'Let’s Twist Again', as the image of his official Christmas card. When the original was sold a year later, it raised £86,000 for charity.

His 2013 exhibition at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, Jack Vettriano: A Retrospective, attracted more than 136,000 visitors over its five-month run. It was said at the time to be the most successful commercial exhibition ever staged in Glasgow, breaking the attendance records of Kelvingrove’s 1948 Van Gogh exhibition.

Despite Vettrianio’s phenomenal rise and his work’s mass appeal, the Fife born painter was never fully accepted into Scotland’s art establishment. His work was often pooh-poohed, both by critics and those in charge of national institutions. It took until 2011 for any to take his work, when his self-portrait, 'The Weight', was shown at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.  

Some of Vettriano’s defenders suggested the institutional reluctance to show a self-taught artist from a poverty-stricken background such as Vettriano was rooted in the class-based snobbery of an artistic elite. Despite belated acceptance, Vettriano remained an outsider until the end, albeit a hugely successful one.

Born Jack Hoggan, he grew up with his mother, father and brother in a cramped miner’s house in Methil, the Fife industrial seaside town later immortalised in the Proclaimers’ song, 'Letter from America'. Hoggan had to share a bed with his brother and wear hand-me-down clothes, and from the age of ten was sent out to earn money in a succession of menial jobs.

Leaving school aged fifteen, he became an apprentice mining engineer. He only took up painting after a girlfriend bought him a set of watercolours for his twenty-first birthday, with his early works drawing inspiration from the old masters he saw in Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery that his early paintings homaged.

In a hint of the acquired exoticism to come, when he moved to Edinburgh in his thirties, he took his mother’s maiden name, and Jack Vettriano was born. In 1987 he applied to study Fine Art, but his portfolio was rejected. As a self invented artist, he nevertheless made waves quickly. A year after his rejection he submitted two paintings to the Royal Scottish Academy Annual Exhibition. He sold both within a day. Vettriano’s work became ubiquitous, and over the next four decades he exhibited and sold all over the world.

In 2003, Vettriano was awarded an OBE for services to painting, and in 2004 he set up a scholarship with the University of St Andrews for students who would otherwise not be able to afford higher education.

In 2006, Vettriano found himself championed by Fife sired band Saint Jude’s Infirmary in their song, 'Goodbye Jack Vettriano'. He appeared in a video for the song screened on BBC Scotland’s BBC Music Show that saw the band re-enact the scene depicted in 'The Singing Butler' on Portobello Beach. Vettriano provided cover art for the band’s album, 'This Has Been the Death of Us' (2009), which featured a spoken word performance by Vettriano on one track.

In 2010, Vettriano made a prodigal’s return to Fife, exhibiting forty new works at Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery in his exhibition, Days of Wine and Roses. In 2017, Vettriano was one of three artists alongside John Byrne and Rachel Maclean to paint portraits of Glasgow comedy star Billy Connolly. These were initially shown at Glasgow People’s Palace before being transferred to murals in the centre of Glasgow. Vettriano’s features on a wall end on Dixon Street.

Vettriano continued to leave his mark, both on the commercial art economy, and on those who loved his work. His success may have been self-made, but he remained a people’s painter to the end.