Works by Vettriano expected to fetch £2m plus

WHEN an Edinburgh couple paid £10,000 for a painting by Jack Vettriano in 1991, they didn’t realise it was to prove the wisest investment of their lives.

For now the picture, Mad Dogs, is expected to fetch at least 250,000, perhaps much more, when it goes up for auction later this summer.

The couple, who wish to remain anonymous, are among a group of about 25 private collectors who have decided to part with a total of 40 Vettriano paintings, in the largest group of works by the Scottish artist ever to come up for sale.

The value of Vettriano’s highly charged and iconic images has risen quickly over the past two years, and collectors in possession of his works are keen to exploit the trend following the sale in April of The Singing Butler - the most frequently reproduced picture in Britain - for 744,800, setting a record for a Scottish artist.

They have inundated the auctioneers, Sotheby’s, with offers to sell, and the 40 selected for auction at the Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder, Perthshire, on 1 September are expected to realise a total of more than 2 million.

Andre Zlattinger, the head of Sotheby’s Scottish pictures department in London, said yesterday: "I could have taken 80 pictures. We have been overwhelmed with interest since the sale of The Singing Butler and other Vettriano works at Hopetoun House. Collectors have seen the way the market has progressed and are seeing it as a great opportunity. There is strong demand for his work, here and abroad, and we expect the sale to attract a large number of Vettriano enthusiasts."

Mad Dogs, painted in 1991, at about the same time as The Singing Butler, depicts two elegantly dressed women paddling on a beach, one holding a parasol and the other being shaded by a man holding a parasol. Two or three years ago, it might have been expected to fetch 50,000; a year ago, perhaps 100,000. Now, following the success of The Singing Butler, and with the likes of Jack Nicholson, Sir Tim Rice, Sir Terence Conran, Robbie Coltrane and Sir Alex Ferguson all owning Vettrianos, it has been estimated at up to 250,000.

Sir Alex’s interest in the work of his fellow Scot was confirmed earlier this week when it emerged he had paid 130,000 for Along Came A Spider, part of a current exhibition of 35 works by the artist in London’s Portland Gallery. The erotic painting features Vettriano’s girlfriend, Tracey Clinton, 32, draped over a chaise longue wearing a black cocktail dress and long gloves.

Given the phenomenal interest in Vettriano at present, Mad Dogs could fetch considerably more than the estimate of 250,000.

Two other Vettriano paintings have been afforded similar pre-sale estimates of 200,000-250,000, including Shades of Scarlet (1996), featuring a man and woman leaning towards each other on a staircase, and In Thoughts of You, with the profile of a shapely woman in stiletto heels gazing towards a window. They, too, could well exceed expectations.

Several of Vettriano’s more risqu works, featuring scantily clad women or suggestive poses, are among the 40 on offer. These include Game On, Strange and Tender Magic and Study for Mirror Mirror, all of which should realise at least 50,000.

Vettriano, originally a mining engineer from Methil, has become the artistic sensation of his generation, overcoming criticisms of his populist work as "colouring-in" and "semi-pornographic".

Vettriano, 53, has sold more than three million poster reproductions of his works around the world and earns an estimated 500,000 a year from royalties.

Reproductions of The Singing Butler, for instance, which shows a barefoot lady in a red dress dancing with a dinner-jacketed man on a stormy beach, while a butler and maid struggle to shield them from the weather with umbrellas, outsells Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso and Warhol.

Prices for Vettriano paintings, usually completed at his 2 million studio in Knightsbridge, London, have rocketed. Two years ago, the most ever paid for one was just over 44,000.

Last month, the auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull, in Edinburgh, sold 14 works which, although modestly priced, fetched almost 1 million in total. Bonhams is selling seven Vettrianos, including a self-portrait, next month. Publicly, it says they will fetch "more than 100,000", but experts say it could be five times that amount.