Jack Vettriano | Fallen angels

Jack Vettriano (1951-2025) was born in Fife, Scotland in 1951.

After leaving school at 15, he followed his father down the mine, working as an apprentice engineer.

He later moved on to white-collar jobs in management services. 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.

Prior to moving from Kirkcaldy to Edinburgh, he decided to mark a break with his past work which hitherto had been sold under his family name Hoggan.

From this time on, he adopted his mother’s maiden name.

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.

In 1996, Pavilion books commissioned W. Gordon Smith to compile an anthology, ‘Fallen Angels’, in which over 40 Vettriano images were accompanied by a selection of Scottish writing.

Poets, playwrights, novelists and actors were asked for a personal response to an individual painting or poem.

In the same year, Sir Terrance Conran commissioned Vettriano to create a series of paintings for Conran’s Bluebird Club in London.

The seven paintings inspired by the life of Sir Malcom Campbell hung there for ten years.

In 1998, Vettriano moved to London where he continued to have sell-out shows including, ‘Between Darkness and Dawn’, ‘Lovers and Other Strangers’ and ‘Affairs of the Heart’.