{"id":769663,"date":"2026-09-13T20:02:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T20:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/769663\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T20:02:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T20:02:17","slug":"lothario-jack-vettriano-really-liked-to-paint-with-a-view-to-voyeurism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/769663\/","title":{"rendered":"Lothario Jack Vettriano really liked to paint with a view to voyeurism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n I\u2019ll tell you what he was doing: getting rich. His most famous painting, and the best selling art print in Britain, The Singing Butler, sold at auction for \u00a3744,800. At one point, he was making half a million squids a year from prints and other merchandise. He had homes in London, Nice and, er, Kirkcaldy<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\n No wonder critics hated him. Well, that and his style, seen at best by the cognoscenti as poor man\u2019s Hopper, tolerable perhaps as pulp illustration more than painting, and at worst as \u201cbadly conceived soft porn\u201d and \u201cbrainless erotica\u201d.\n<\/p>\n

\n Disgraceful if true. As was his private life, evidently featuring a superfluity of stimulants and concupiscence. The Guardian called him a \u201clothario with a paintbrush\u201d.\n<\/p>\n

\n Read more\n<\/p>\n

\n RAB MCNEIL’S SCOTTISH ICONS: John Knox \u2013 the fiery preacher whose pal got burnt at the stake<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n Rab McNeil: For whom the bridge tolled: the saga of travelling over the sea to Skye<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n Rab McNeil: It\u2019s time to cut the Fringe \u2013 Edinburgh\u2019s annual bourgeois fete<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n Rab McNeil: The truth is oot there as aliens frolic about in fancy UFOs<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n Now, I\u2019ve no dog in this cock fight. All I can say is that, while the most popular, outdoor, beach depictions do little for me, the indoor ones at least intrigue. Arguably atmospheric, ken?\n<\/p>\n

\n Still, even if your instinct is to take his side against snooty art critics, it\u2019s difficult to ignore the fact that figures in his most famous work were, as revealed in 2005, straight copies from an illustrators\u2019 manual.\n<\/p>\n

\n Artistic licence for licentious art? Art<\/a>, my bottom, said the critics, decrying him as the Jeffrey Archer of painters.\n<\/p>\n

\n Sunday Times scribe Waldemar Januszczak described Vettriano\u2019s work as \u201cmeretricious rubbish\u201d, continuing: \u201cIt may have a role to play on the walls of a cocktail bar with pretensions, but its intrinsic shallowness, its magazine slickness, the unsightly coyness of its eroticism, the absurd melodrama of its moods, the banality of its imaginative flourishes, the creepiness of its world-view, the facelessness of its finish, all these shortcomings disqualify it from serious consideration by a national collection.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Still not finished, he added that it belonged with the then popular poster of a female tennis player scratching her naked bum.\n<\/p>\n

\n Art attack\n<\/p>\n

\n CRITICS in his native Scotia also volleyed balls of fury Jack\u2019s way. Sandy Moffat, then head of drawing and painting at Glasgow School of Art, said: \u201cHe can\u2019t paint, he just colours in.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Richard Calvocoressi, then director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, sniffed: \u201c[W]e think him an indifferent painter.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Jack Hoggan (as was) could not have predicted such ire when he was born on 17 November 1951 in the aforementioned Methil.\n<\/p>\n

\n Life in the small miner\u2019s cottage was hard and, from the age of 10, Jack was delivering papers and milk, cleaning windows and picking potatoes, with Pater taking half his earnings.\n<\/p>\n

\n Jack\u2019s Italian grandfather would bring home bookie\u2019s pencils and betting slips, on which the boy doodled: \u201cgoalmouth incidents, birds\u2019 nests. I had a thing about birds\u2019 nests.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n He left school at 15, having learned only that \u201cthere are snobs in this life and then there is you\u201d. For a while, he had a summer job as a bingo caller at Beachcomber Amusements on Leven Promenade, fleecing holidaymakers with fake numbers.\n<\/p>\n

\n He worked in a colliery filling sandbags before securing an engineering apprenticeship. \u201cI carried the journeyman\u2019s toolbag,\u201d he recalled, \u201cand learned to say something interesting when all I was thinking about was women. The rest of the time it was smoking and skiving.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n His heroes hung around street corners. \u201cThey were hard men. I just wanted to leave school, buy clothes, maybe get a car, go dancing, pick up women \u2026\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Knew his onions\n<\/p>\n

\n THIS he ungallantly essayed at the Raith and Burma ballrooms, trying to snog gals afterwards with burger and onion juice dripping down his chin. Did I mention this was in Fife?\n<\/p>\n

\n His life changed when a girlfriend bought him a box of watercolours for his 21st birthday. Thus began an obsession and the only training available to him: copying. He spent so much time at Kirkcaldy Art Gallery, studying artists like Peploe and McTaggart, that he feared staff suspected a planned heist.\n<\/p>\n

\n One day, he took a train to London, visiting galleries every weekend. Unfortunately his trainee chef gig didn\u2019t work out.\n<\/p>\n

\n Neither did his digs, with a landlady repeatedly shouting: \u201cWhere\u2019s my teeth?\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Back in Scotland, a series of jobs followed: shoe shop manager, bar manager, engineer. In 1987, aged 36, he moved to Edinburgh<\/a> where he adopted his mother\u2019s maiden name Vettrino, adding an \u201ca\u201d for an affectation that he felt suited both his dark painting style and his unshaven, vaguely dangerous self-image.\n<\/p>\n

\n An application to study Fine Art at Edinburgh University was rejected. Meanwhile, he kept copying artists he admired, like Caravaggio, Van Gogh, Degas and Monet. Then he thought: \u2018Why don\u2019t I paint the things that are closest to me? Women.\u2019\n<\/p>\n

\n Accordingly, his breakthrough came in 1988 when he submitted two canvases \u2013 Model (then wife Gail) in a White Slip and Saturday Night (couple in a dancehall) \u2013 to the Royal Scottish Academy\u2019s annual show. Both sold on the first day. Suddenly, the galleries showed interest.\n<\/p>\n

\n That interest went stratospheric with 1992\u2019s Singing Butler. Or, as Vanity Fair put it, The Singing Butler did it. In nostalgic, 1940s cinematic style the SB, as nobody calls it, depicts an elegant couple in evening dress dancing on a breezy beach accompanied by a butler and maid holding umbrellas.\n<\/p>\n

\n Voted the UK\u2019s third favourite work of art, Vettriano said it was a fantasy offering hope: \u201cIf you\u2019re living in Grimsby on a wet Tuesday afternoon, you might be carried away with it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n International exhibitions followed. In New York City, more than 40 collectors from the UK flew forth and queued round the block on a one-in one-out ticketing system to get first option on his work. Twenty paintings were sold on opening night.\n<\/p>\n

\n ‘Shabby’ sex\n<\/p>\n

\n BEYOND SB, Vettriano\u2019s other works are often seedier, featuring more pants, suspenders and stilettos (of which he owned a collection). \u201cSex is often seen as shabby,\u201d he explained, \u201cbut what my work satisfies in people is voyeurism.\u201d I see.\n<\/p>\n

\n In 2013, Vettriano was the subject of a retrospective at Glasgow\u2019s Kelvingrove Gallery and, in 2017, was one of three artists commissioned to paint portraits of Billy Connolly<\/a>, shown at the People\u2019s Palace, to celebrate the comedian\u2019s 75th birthday.\n<\/p>\n

\n On 1 March 2025, Jack Vettriano was found dead at his Nice apartment. He was 73.\n<\/p>\n

\n He once said: \u201cAt least I tried. At least I am prepared to put it up on the wall. And you can have a go at it if you like.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ll tell you what he was doing: getting rich. His most famous painting, and the best selling art…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":769664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-769663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}