Jack Vettriano was born in Fife, Scotland in 1951. Vettriano took up painting as a hobby in the 1970s when a girlfriend bought him a set of watercolours for his birthday and from then on, he spent much of his spare time teaching himself to paint. He learned his craft by copying Old Masters, Impressionists, Surrealists and a plethora of Scottish artists.

The turning point came in 1988 when he submitted two paintings to the Royal Scottish Academy’s Annual Exhibition; both were sold on the first day and Vettriano was approached by several galleries. He held his first solo exhibition at the Edinburgh Gallery in 1992 entitled ‘Tales of Love and Other Stories’ and later that year, he exhibited at the Mall Galleries in London.

He was represented by Portland Gallery from 1994-2007 and during this time, he had many sell-out solo exhibitions in Edinburgh, London, Hong Kong and New York and counts Jack Nicholson, Sir Alex Fergusson and Sir Tim Rice amongst his collectors.

The year 2004 was exceptional in Vettriano’s career; his best-known painting, ‘The Singing Butler’ was sold at Sotheby’s for close to £750,000; he was awarded an OBE for Services to the Visual Arts and was the subject of a Southbank show documentary, entitled ‘Jack Vettriano: The People’s Painter’; Pavilion published a book ‘Lovers and Other Strangers’ being an anthology of his work to date with text by Anthony Quinn.

In 2017, he was one of three artists commissioned to paint portraits of Scottish comedian Billy Connolly. These were then put on display in Glasgow People’s Palace, while images were transferred to murals in the centre of Glasgow. It was the subject of a BBC documentary first broadcast on June 14, 2017.

Biography