Jack Vettriano: A Life of Femme Fatales and Mysterious Mavericks

Dubbed ‘the people’s painter’ by the British press, Jack Vettriano’s nostalgic and sensuous paintings of femme fatales and enigmatic men resonated with an audience smitten with his glamorous sense of romance and lust. Self-taught and self-made, Vettraino died at the age of 73 in March 2025, but not before gaining recognition as an artist renowned for an ability to encapsulate the public’s desire for sex and old-Hollywood romance on canvas.

Life could have been very different for Jack Vettriano. After leaving school at 15 he became an apprentice mining engineer who might not have picked up a paintbrush if it wasn’t for a 21^st birthday present of a set of watercolors from a girlfriend. Instead, his prints in Britain would outsell those of Salvador Dali, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh thanks to the cinematic composition of his paintings that were bathed in atmospheric lighting and filled with elegantly dressed figures in intimate scenarios.

Vettriano’s style has been compared to that of Edward Hopper (see Summer Evening) and Walter Sickert, and his windswept beaches to those of Eugène Boudin. His enigmatic paintings tell stories of romantic trysts filled with hidden narratives that could easily form a starting point for dozens of romantic stories. They have captured public imagination, and not only made his The Singing Butler painting the best-selling art print in the UK, but also made him one of the most well-known British painters of this century.

Evocative, and at times provocative, Vettriano painted tough, voluptuous Ava Gardner-style brunettes: “Blondes,” he explained, “have too much sweetness.” Men in dinner suits, women in evening gowns, flirtatious poses, romantic settings, and a whisky-induced tenderness of a nostalgic and chivalrous age evoke a bygone era and a sense of romance that could have been ripped from a film noir. It could be Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall dancing on a windy beach, or it could be you and your partner.

And this blend of evocative nostalgia and romance proved irresistible to the British public, as 12 million posters have been sold to date – that’s nearly a fifth of the population. Similarly, his art has proved popular with a variety of celebrity collectors – from Jack Nicholson to Tim Rice and Jackie Stewart – Vettriano’s distinctive figurative paintings of feminine sensuality have endured far longer than the brief romantic encounters that his paintings depict.

The critical reception hasn’t always been favorable, particularly when he revealed the inspiration for the dancing couple in The Singing Butler came from poses in the Illustrator’s Figure Reference Manual. “I don’t give a fuck!” he replied. “Picasso said, ‘Other artists borrow—I steal.’ And the same book I used was found in Francis Bacon’s studio when he died.” And seemingly, the public doesn’t care either, even if they might be a little more delicate with their language.

Despite his lack of formal training and the art establishment’s dismissive reception, Vettriano achieved remarkable commercial success, becoming one of the UK’s most popular contemporary artists. Drawing inspiration from works at Kirkcaldy Galleries in Scotland, he studied paintings by the likes of Samuel Peploe and William McTaggart so intently in his formative years that he worried he would arouse suspicion in the gallery staff.

His early artistic endeavors were pastiches of impressionist paintings, and it took him a number of decades before finding his artistic niche. His breakthrough arrived in 1989 when the Royal Scottish Academy accepted two of his paintings to their annual show – and they both sold on the first day, inspiring him to become a full-time artist.

Perhaps typical of the divide between his appeal with the public and critics, his now famous The Singing Butler was rejected by the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1992, before it found favor with the public and became his most renowned work, eventually selling for £744,800 at auction in 2004. ​

People’s Paintings

Depicting a well-tailored and elegant couple dancing on a windy beach accompanied by their butler and maid, The Singing Butler encapsulates a nostalgic time and place that seemingly transports the viewer to a specific romantic mood and moment. The Singing Butler did this so well that it became one of the most famous British paintings of the last decade – and one that still adorns living room walls up and down the British Isles.

The elegant sweep of the dancer’s bodies, the romantic beach setting, and cinematic quality of the piece has made it a contemporary painting that has captured the hearts and imagination of the public. Vettriano positioned a maid and butler either side of the couple, he says, “to make the picture more balanced. It’s an uplifting fantasy, and it makes people feel good.”

And that feel good emotion that captures a quiet moment of happiness and intimacy is at the heart of Vettriano’s appeal. His subtle manipulation of light and shadow allows the drama to take center stage and generates the cinematic quality that audiences find relatable. The painting even found a new audience in recent years when street artist, Banksy affectionately reimagined it in Crude Oil (Vettriano), which was sold by Blink 182’s rock star bassist, star Mark Hoppus for £4.3 million at Sotheby’s in March 2025.

Vettriano hit upon a winning formula with his style of painting. “I could turn out an abstract painting for you, but it wouldn’t be coming from the heart. What I paint is what moves me. These people that I seem to surround myself with… a bunch of no-goods… but you know, I just like that world – a world of sexiness and hedonism. I like that because I’m a storyteller.”

Storytelling was at the heart of his painting and that story was immediately tangible. The cinematic old Hollywood gloss of The Singing Butler is repeated across all of his paintings and is evident in a series he produced inspired by the life of Malcolm Campbell and his record-breaking Blue Bird car. Transporting you instantly to the Bonneville Salt Flats in the 1930s, you can almost smell the cigarettes and engine oil. Like so much of Vettriano’s work, the series was made available to the public in a boxed set featuring signed, limited-edition prints of all seven paintings.

But it’s the theme of sex that is the domineering presence across the vast majority of Vettriano’s paintings. From the lust of paintings like The Man in a Navy Blue Suit, to the overt sexiness of Game On, the forbidden romance of Betrayal – No Turning Back, and the dreamlike romance of Dance Me To The End Of Love, sex is rarely far from a Vettriano canvas. And it’s a subject close to his heart.

Art Imitates Life

I live in a world of heartbreak,” he told The Independent newspaper in 2010. “I just seem to be more creative when I’m in some kind of emotional distress.” Vettriano’s art was characteristically and proudly autobiographical, and he lived a life of hedonism that would bring a smirk to the face of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The women depicted on canvas have often featured in his life in some way, as lovers, models, friends, or prostitutes, and some paintings even depicted scenes from his life – Scarlet Ribbons is about his experience of bondage and Beautiful Losers is about a threesome.

“It’s my life that is up there. Why deny it?” and that devotion to documenting his life with a nostalgic, well-dressed Hollywood gloss resonates with people. “I am my own leading man. And it’s a position I’m reluctant to give up.”

And this combination of autobiographical painting with a nostalgic veneer has led to hundreds of thousands of people buying prints of his paintings that seemingly communicate feelings and emotions that strike a chord with ordinary people. “People ‘get’ my work. They just look at it, and it resonates,” he explained.

No other artist in recent memory has seemingly tapped into everyday people’s desires quite as effectively as Vettriano, who so succinctly visualized people’s desire to ooze a sense of cool in finely tailored clothes, embark on romantic affairs, look good doing so, and be irresistibly sexy. And for that he’s a genius.