Vettriano's works copied from illustrator's manual, it is revealed

Published on Tuesday 4 October 2005 00:21

HE HAS both been held up to acclaim as Scotland's greatest living artist and taunted by critics as a purveyor of "dim erotica" whose work is "colouring in". And yesterday Jack Vettriano managed to split the artworld once again when it emerged that he had painted some of his most famous pictures by copying images in an illustrators' teaching manual.

The figures in The Singing Butler, which was sold for 744,800 in April 2004, breaking all records for a Scottish painting - and which has been reproduced millions of times on prints and merchandise - were found to have been taken directly from a 16.99 book of photographs, with only minor changes to clothing.

Characters from other famous Vettriano paintings including Elegy for the Dead Admiral and The Waltzers also bore striking similarities to photographs in The Illustrator's Figure Reference Manual, as do those in Dance Me to the End of Love, painted just eight years ago in 1997.

Yesterday, his friend and agent Tom Hewlett from the Portland Gallery in London issued a statement springing to the artist's defence: "It is widely known that Jack is a self-taught artist and it seems unsurprising that as, in his early painting years he had neither the time nor the money to work with real-life models, that he should use a teaching manual such as this.

"Vettriano's skill lies in his ability to create narrative paintings with which the viewer becomes involved. He is a master of generating atmosphere in his paintings and bringing to life the characters within them."

Others were more dismissive. The Scotsman's art critic Duncan Macmillan said: "I'm not surprised to hear this because it's always been clear to me that Vettriano worked with reproductions rather than looking at people or anything real. I never knew where he was finding pictures to copy, but I could tell he was doing this. It certainly won't do his reputation any good."

But, no stranger to controversy, Vettriano has never made any secret of the fact that he paints from photographs. Adherents would argue that his strength as a painter is not in his figures but in the narratives and atmospheres he creates. They don't care if this is realised with the help of photographs of people.

Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery near his home town is the only public gallery in the UK which owns works by Vettriano. Dallas Mechan, museums co-ordinator, said: "This news doesn't affect our relationship with the artist and we are very happy to be associated with him."

This is the voice of Vettriano's loyal supporters and there are plenty of those. He is, after all, a people's hero, a miner's son who became a worldwide success story after teaching himself to paint.

When the art world was pouring adulation on dead sharks and unmade beds, he was making paintings people liked and understood.

Interviewed last year, a few months after the sale of The Singing Butler, Mr Vettriano was modest and self-effacing about his success. "It was one of these paintings I ought not to have been able to do. It was like I cheated. It was 1992, I was hardly in the back door of the art world when I did it."

Most hurtful to him now would be the implication that others feel that he did cheat. And for a man constantly at odds with the arts establishment, he may feel that whatever he did or didn't do in its production, his crime remains that the painting went on to sell for nearly 750,000, produced millions of prints and turned its author into a millionaire.

Robin McClure, director of painting at the Scottish Gallery, said: "Everyone knew they were done from photographs, we just didn't know which photographs. I don't think this will affect the price of his art work. There are plenty of artists out there who can't draw."

But Joe McLaughlin, a self-taught artist from Ayrshire, is a less lofty sceptic of Vettriano's methods. A former fan of Vettriano's, he was accused by the artist's agent of copying one of his paintings, when in fact both had been inspired by the same photograph of Vettriano himself with a model.

Mr McLaughlin, who proved that his was painted first, says he has never received an apology.

"This shows Vettriano to be a hypocrite. What makes me very angry is that he accused someone who was innocent of copying when it turns out he has been doing it for years."

Even before this scandal broke there were suggestions that Vettriano's prices had peaked. After the record sale of The Singing Butler, high prices were sustained for some months but more recently it has become clear that the darker, more erotic works in particular struggle to find buyers.

At a Scottish paintings sale at Sotheby's in April, 12 out of 20 Vettriano paintings went unsold.

Vettriano is now less likely to be bothered by falling prices than by the damage done to his reputation following the new revelations. But the fact remains that for every person jealous of his success, there are plenty of others who have forked out their hard-earned money for his prints, and will continue to do so.

Yesterday's scandal isn't the first to hit his career and won't be the last. But in terms of popular success, it's a blip on the landscape, not the end of the road.