Jack Vettriano (Framed)

Jack Vettriano, who passed away in early 2025, was probably best known for his painting The Singing Butler, which was sold at Sotheby's in 2004 for close to £750,000. He was often referred to as the people's painter because he was popular with the public but less accepted by the art establishment. Born in Fife, Scotland in 1951, Jack Vettriano left school at sixteen to become a mining engineer. For his twenty-first birthday, a girlfriend gave him a set of watercolour paints, and from then on, he spent much of his spare time teaching himself to paint. In 1989, he submitted two paintings to the Royal Scottish Academy's annual exhibition; both were accepted and sold on the first day. The following year, an equally enthusiastic reaction greeted the three paintings he entered for the prestigious Summer Exhibition at London's Royal Academy, and his new life as an artist began from that point on. Over the years, interest in Vettriano's work grew consistently. There were sell-out solo exhibitions in Edinburgh, London, Hong Kong, and New York. In 2004, he was awarded an OBE for Services to the Visual Arts and was the subject of a South Bank Show documentary, entitled Jack Vettriano: The People's Painter. In later years, Vettriano focused on a variety of private projects, including the launch of a new book and the painting of a portrait of Zara Phillips as part of a charity fund-raising project for Sport Relief—the experience of which was captured in a documentary broadcast on BBC1 in March 2008. Vettriano divided his time between his homes in Fife, London, and Nice.