Vettriano third in UK art poll
● Fife-born artist polls higher than Turner, Lowry and Gainsborough
The Singing Butler by Jack Vettriano has been voted one of Britain’s all-time favourite works of art.
The Fife-born artist’s painting was named third in a nationwide poll behind Banksy’s Balloon Girl and The Hay Wain by John Constable.
Almost a third of those who took part in the Samsung survey, commissioned to coincide with the launch of a new TV which becomes a work of art when it is not being used, voted for The Singing Butler. Half of the shortlist was drawn from the 20th and 21st centuries.
It was the painting which set a Scottish record when it sold at auction for nearly £750,000.
Now The Singing Butler by Jack Vettriano has been voted one of Britain’s all-time favourite works of art.
The Fife-born artist’s most famous painting was named third in a nationwide poll behind Banksy’s Balloon Girl and The Hay Wain by John Constable.
Vettriano’s work, which was created 25 years ago, was voted ahead of paintings by Turner, Lowry and Waterhouse.
Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North and Sir Peter Blake’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover for The Beatles also made the top 10.
Vettriano was the only Scottish artist to make the shortlist for The Frame National Art Audit, which was commissioned by Samsung.
Classic album covers for The Sex Pistols and Pink Floyd were judged alongside work by contemporary artists like Andy Goldsworthy, David Hockney and Anish Kapoor.
Born Jack Hoggan in St Andrews, Vettriano, who taught himself to paint, was brought up in the Fife seaside town of Methil.
He left school at 16 to become an apprentice mining engineer and also had a spell as a bingo caller before taking up painting when a then-girlfriend bought him a set of watercolours for his 21st birthday.
He sold his first original works in the late 1980s. In 1989, he submitted two paintings to the Royal Scottish Academy’s annual exhibition; both were accepted and sold on the first day.
Vettriano’s romantic image of a couple dancing on a stormswept beach, which was rejected by the Royal Academy for its summer exhibition in 1992, was first sold privately for £3,500.
Four years later it changed hands for £5,000 and in 2003 it was sold at auction for £90,000. A fierce bidding war the following year saw The Singing Butler, which had been expected to fetch up to £200,000 eventually go under the hammer for £744,480, more than any other work by a Scottish artist.
It helped attract record numbers of visitors to Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery when it was put on public display in 2013 as part of a major retrospective of the artist’s career.
Almost a third of those to vote in the Samsung survey, commissioned to coincide with the launch of a new TV which becomes a work of art when it is not being used, voted for The Singing Butler, in the poll, which saw half of the shortlist drawn from the 20th and 21st centuries.
A spokeswoman for Samsung said: “The nation’s love of sculpture, public art and record sleeves meant that only half the top 20 works were traditional paintings or drawings. Installations by the likes of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin failed to connect with the public and did not make the top 20.”
The arguments over whether Jack Vettriano’s work merited a place in a national gallery were rehearsed years ago, and although the Methil artist’s work was eventually put on public display beyond Kirkcaldy Galleries – the Scottish National Portrait Gallery displayed a selfportrait from 2011 – he has always been shunned by the art establishment. Criticism directed at him has often been savage and personal.
It is easy to spot the flaws in the work of this self-taught artist, but his detractors were ultimately damning the public, for having the poor sense to like Vettriano’s work. It was not Vettriano who forced his work to wider attention and stuck it under the noses of the disapproving; instead, it was those who admired it, wanted it, and bought it, who propelled it to prominence.
Today, a poll rates a Vettriano painting higher than several of Britain’s greatest ever (‘proper’) artists. We should take that finding with a pinch of salt, but it is a reminder that whatever we think of the standard of his work, Vettriano holds more attraction for the average person in the street than many of the classics. Let his work be enjoyed.