'Evocative and timeless': Tributes to artist Jack Vettriano, who went from the mines of Fife to worldwide fame

He was the self-taught artist who became an international sensation, yet endured a spiky relationship with the art establishment in his homeland.

First Minister John Swinney has led tributes to Jack Vettriano, the Scottish painter who became one Britain’s most sought after contemporary artists. The 73 year-old was found dead at his flat in Nice, France, on Saturday. It is understood there are no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death.

In a statement, Vettriano’s publicist said that his passing marked “the end of an era for contemporary Scottish art,” adding: "His evocative and timeless works will continue to captivate and inspire future generations.”

Vettriano’s official Facebook page described him as an “extraordinary artist” and a “deeply private and humble man” who was “endlessly grateful” for the support and admiration of those who loved his work.

The announcement of his death comes on the eve of the opening day of an exhibition of his work in his home town of Methil, Fife, featuring an extensive collection of signed limited edition prints, as well as previously unseen paintings.

Jack Vettriano at One Devonshire Gardens in Glasgow. In the bath in the Vettriano Suite in 2009 | Robert Perry / TSPL

Vettriano’s work was collected by the likes of Jack Nicholson, Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Tim Rice, and Robbie Coltraine, and exhibited as far afield as Edinburgh, New York, Hong Kong, and Johannesburg.

In a post on X, Mr Swinney said: “I am very sorry to hear the news that Jack Vettriano has died. He made a unique and evocative contribution to artistic life in Scotland in such compelling style. My condolences to his family.”

Anas Sarwar, the leader of Scottish Labour, said the news of Vettriano’s death was “very sad,” and described him as an “iconic Scottish artist.”

Despite, or perhaps because of his extraordinary commercial success, Vettriano had a strained relationship with the art world throughout his career, which generally regarded his technique and erotically-charged work with a combination of disdain and indifference.

Artist Jack Vettriano in the Bonhams in Edinburgh as he stands beside his Winsor and Newton easel and his painting An Unexpected Guest, which are part of a sale of his possessions being held by the auction house | PA

In turn, Vettriano sometimes bristled at such a reaction, or casually disregarded it, once telling The Scotsman’s sister title, Scotland on Sunday: “Is our purpose to please 200,000 people or to be very exclusive and please one? I think the former.”

In the wake of his death, the art historian, Richard Morris, said: “For all the downgrading of Jack Vettriano's paintings by critics who often called his work 'soulless, fetishistic and empty,' he was self-made, and gave the public what it wanted and I don't believe passing a verdict on art that is someone's dream, someone's life.”

Born Jack Hoggan on 17 November 1951, Vettriano left school at the age of 15 and found work as a mining engineer and bingo caller, before taking up painting after being given a set of watercolours by a girlfriend on his 21st birthday.

It was to prove to be a transformative gift Vettriano learned his craft by studying paintings by the likes of Samuel Peploe and William McTaggart at galleries in Kirkcaldy, and copying works in books and catalogues. “When I tried it I really enjoyed it,” he recalled years later. “I would paint a couple of nights a week. I had so many fights with my parents because of the smell of turps coming out of the room and they would go mental when I made up still lives and left them until the fruit went all rotten.”

Jack Vettriano at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow where more than 100 paintings spanning his entire career are on display opening to the public on Saturday 21 September 2013. This once in a lifetime Retrospective gathers together all of the artist's most famous works for the first time including Dance me to the end of Love (1998), Bluebird at Bonneville (1996), The Billy Boys (1994) and The Singing Butler (1992). | PA

By 1988, Vettriano had developed his style, loosely inspired by film noir, and submitted two paintings to the Royal Scottish Academy’s annual show. Both sold on the first day, inspiring him to take up art full-time.

But it was Vettriano’s The Singing Butler - a painting depicting a woman in a red dress dancing with a tuxedo-clad man on a sodden beach - that catapulted him to international fame and fortune. While Vettriano first sold the work for just £3,000 in 1991, his rising fame helped it to set a new Scottish record when it was sold at auction at Sotheby’s in 2004 for £744,800.

The image became the bestselling fine art print in Britain, reproduced widely across prints, mugs, and greeting cards, with the licensing agreements reputed to earn the Scot around a quarter of a million pounds in royalties a year.

It was reimagined by Banksy for his work Crude Oil (Vettriano), which is owned by Blink-182 star Mark Hoppus. It is expected to fetch between £3 million and £5m at auction in London on Tuesday.

The Singing Butler was Vettriano’s most famous work. Picture: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images | Getty Images

One of the high-points of Vettriano’s career came in 2013, when Glasgow’s Kevingrove Art Gallery and Museum staged a hugely successful retrospective of his work, which broke attendance records over the course of its 23 week-long run, with more than 136,000 visitors.

The artist, who endured battles with depression and alcohol addiction, once told Scotland on Sunday about the tensions involved in being renowned in his homeland, explaining: “I think it’s very difficult to be famous in your own backyard. Of course, the public there love me because they love ‘the story’. But the establishment, the art world, clearly don’t like the story.”

However, there were notable exceptions. Vettriano, who was appointed an OBE for services to visual arts in 2003, dedicated his first major retrospective to Gordon Smith, a former art critic at Scotland on Sunday, who gave Vettriano his first ever media coverage in the early 1990s, and remained a staunch supporter of his work.

Mr Smith's interview with Vettriano, published in July 1991, reproduced his painting of The Singing Butler, and he went on to edit a book of Vettriano’s work, featuring contributions from the likes of Alasdair Gray, AL Kennedy, and Norman MacCaig.

Vettriano later said Mr Smith was “astonishingly helpful” to him at a time when critics were deriding his work as “soft porn.” He explained: “His generosity of spirit kept me going when some critics were being absolutely horrific to me.”