Jack Vettriano has had a meteoric rise to fame emerging from the unlikely background of the Scottish coalfields. A Scotsman of Italian descent, he left school at sixteen to become a mining engineer working down the Fife coalfields.
For his twenty-first birthday a girlfriend gave him a set of watercolour paints and from then on, he spent much of his spare time teaching himself to paint. His first solo exhibition in Edinburgh was a sell-out and since then he has had exhibitions in London, Hong Kong, New York and Rome.
Unknown and untutored, he has become Scotland’s most successful and controversial contemporary artist.
Appearing on posters and cards, mugs and umbrellas, prints of his work outsell Van Gogh, Dali and Monet and his paintings have been acquired by celebrities around the world.
The Singing Butler, Britain’s most reproduced painting, fetched a record £744,800 at auction in April 2004.
Vettriano’s powerful canvases are beautifully captured in this new edition of Jack Vettriano, which includes 15 more recent images, from exhibitions between 2006 and 2010.
Vettriano’s images often have a mysterious narrative and are a gateway to an alluring yet sinister world.
Daylight scenes of heady optimism, painted against backdrops of beaches and racetracks, are counterbalanced by more disquieting canvases of complex night-time liaisons in bars and clubs, bedrooms and ballrooms.
You can find further details of Jack Vettriano on the main catalogue, available in ‘Catalogues’ on the Library’s website.