41 Facts About Jack Vettriano

Jack Vettriano was born on Jack Hoggan, 17 November 1951 and is a Scottish painter.

Jack Vettriano's 1992 painting The Singing Butler became a best-selling image in Britain.

Jack Vettriano was born and grew up in the industrial seaside town of Methil, Fife.

Jack Vettriano was raised in poverty; he lived with his mother, father and older brother in a spartan miner's house, sharing a bed with his brother and wearing hand-me-down clothes.

Jack Vettriano took up painting as a hobby in the 1970s, when a girlfriend bought him a set of watercolours for his 21st birthday.

Jack Vettriano's earliest paintings, under his birth name "Jack Hoggan", were copies or pastiches of impressionist paintings; his first painting was a copy of Claude Monet's Poppy Fields.

In 1984, Jack Vettriano first submitted his work to the Shell-sponsored art exhibition in the museum.

In 1987, when he was 36, Jack Vettriano left his wife Gail, seeking to emulate Paul Gauguin.

Jack Vettriano quit his job in educational research and moved to Edinburgh where he adopted his mother's maiden name.

Jack Vettriano applied to study Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh, but his portfolio was rejected.

In 1988, Jack Vettriano submitted two canvases for the Royal Scottish Academy annual show.

In November 1999, Jack Vettriano's work was shown for the first time in New York City, when 21 paintings were displayed at The International 20th Century Arts Fair at The Armory.

In 1996 Sir Terence Conran commissioned Jack Vettriano to create a series of paintings for his new Bluebird Gastrodome in London.

Heartbreak Publishing, Jack Vettriano's own publishing company, produced a boxed set featuring signed, limited-edition prints of all seven paintings to mark the 75th anniversary of Campbell's final World Land Speed Record.

Jack Vettriano's 1992 painting, The Singing Butler, has been the best-selling image in Britain.

Art experts suggested that the monetary value of Jack Vettriano's works needed reassessing.

Jack Vettriano was represented by the Portland Gallery, London from 1993 to 2007, and counts Jack Nicholson, Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Tim Rice and Robbie Coltrane amongst his collectors.

In February 2009, Jack Vettriano launched Heartbreak Publishing and his own London gallery, called Heartbreak, which exclusively represents him, but still promotes younger artists.

Jack Vettriano received an Order of the British Empire award for Services to Visual Arts during a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on Thursday 27 November 2003.

Deputy director Nicola Kalinsky said Jack Vettriano was "a figure we have wanted on our wall for a while for obvious reasons".

Jack Vettriano's mural is located in Dixon Street, off St Enoch Square.

Jack Vettriano has really pulled himself up from the depth of nowhere.

Jack Vettriano is a self-taught artist in drawing and perspective who manipulates paint in veiled glazes and meaningful shadows.

Jack Vettriano's style has been compared to those of Hopper and Sickert, and his scudded beaches to those of Boudin.

Jack Vettriano's 'popularity' rests on cheap commercial reproductions of his paintings.

In 2013 in The Guardian, art critic Jonathan Jones wrote: "Vettriano fixes on fetishistic, stylish objects and paints them with a slick, empty panache" and "The world of Jack Vettriano is a crass male fantasy that might have come straight out of Money by Martin Amis".

Alongside fellow Fifer, author Ian Rankin, Jack Vettriano put in a cameo appearance in a video with Scottish indie band Saint Jude's Infirmary made for BBC Scotland's The Music Show.

The lyrics of the track Goodbye Jack Vettriano were written by band member Grant Campbell after seeing a Vettriano print on a pub wall in Rotterdam.

Jack Vettriano became a fan of the band after hearing their first album, Happy Healthy Lucky Month, and was inspired to create a painting which featured as the cover of the band's second album, for which both Jack Vettriano and Rankin contributed spoken word pieces.

Jack Vettriano worked with the Italian photographer Fredi Marcarini, both on a series of photographs for the Homage a Tuiga exhibition and on a triptych of portrait shots.

In May 2011, Jack Vettriano collaborated on the exhibition The Ballroom Spy with the photographer Jeanette Jones.

In 2004 Jack Vettriano set up a scholarship for University of St Andrews to fund a student who would not otherwise be able to attend university.

Jack Vettriano was made a Doctor of Letters by the university.

Jack Vettriano has donated several works of art to be sold in aid of charities, including the Terrence Higgins Trust.

In September 2001, Jack Vettriano donated a painting, Beautiful Dreamer to a charity auction, which was held at Sotheby's in aid of Help the Hospices.

Jack Vettriano donated a portrait of Zara Phillips MBE, entitled Olympia, to Sport Relief in 2008.

Also in 2010, Jack Vettriano helped to raise money for the conservation movement Elephant Family by participating in an auction of donated elephant sculptures and models.

Jack Vettriano was asked by First Minister, Alex Salmond to create his official Christmas card Let's Twist Again.

In 2010 Jack Vettriano said about relationships, "Whenever someone stays for longer than two days, I get cabin fever" and that he loves shoe-shopping with women.

Jack Vettriano has set up the Vettriano Trust, and plans to leave his money to it to do good work.

In February 2012, Jack Vettriano was convicted at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court of drink-driving and possession of amphetamine.