Product Description

In December 2003 the painter Jack Vettriano, a coalminer's son, met his parents off the train from Scotland on his way to collect an OBE. Over the last few years Vettriano has had a meteoric rise to fame -- emerging from the unlikely background of the Scottish coalfields, unknown and untutored, he has become Scotland's most successful and controversial contemporary artist. Appearing on posters and cards, mugs and umbrellas, prints of his work outsell Van Gogh, Dali and Monet and his paintings have been acquired by celebrities around the world. 'The Singing Butler', Britain's most reproduced painting, fetched a record GBP744,800 at auction in April 2004. Vettriano's images have an often mysterious narrative and are a gateway to an alluring yet sinister world. Daylight scenes of heady optimism, painted against backdrops of beaches and racetracks, are counterbalanced by more disquieting canvases of complex night-time liaisons in bars and clubs, bedrooms and ballrooms. Both sexes are clearly styled -- the men hard-edged and mysterious, the women seductive and enigmatic. Yet beneath the confident posturing, Vettriano recognizes our inherent human frailty, that there is no victor in the struggle between duplicity and desire. Men and women are ultimately trapped by the machinations of intense love and passion with little control over their destiny. 'Jack Vettriano' presents about thirty new images, as well as some recently surfaced works, plus the best of the paintings previously published in 'Lovers and Other Strangers' and 'Fallen Angels', also by Pavilion. In March 2004 Melvin Bragg's The South Bank Show broadcast a programme dedicated to Jack entitled Jack Vettriano: The People's Painter. Reissued in smaller user-friendly format.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #930624 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 191 pages

About the Author
Jack Vettriano left school at 15 to become a mining engineer. For his 21st 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. Over the last 20 years, interest in Vettriano's work has grown consistently and he has had sell-out solo exhibitions in Edinburgh, London, Hong Kong and New York. In 2004, his best known painting, The Singing Butler was sold for close to GBP750,000 and he was awarded an OBE for Services to the Visual Arts. Vettriano divides his time between Fife, London and Nice.