oil on board, signed
framed

Note: He was born Jack Hoggan on 17 November 1951. He grew up with his mother, father and brother in a cramped miner’s house in Methil, the Fife industrial seaside town later immortalised in The Proclaimers’ song, 'Letter from America'. Hoggan had to share a bed with his brother and wear hand-me-down clothes, and from the age of ten was sent out to earn money in a succession of menial jobs. Leaving school aged fifteen, he became an apprentice mining engineer. He only took up painting after a girlfriend bought him a set of watercolours for his twenty-first birthday, with his early works drawing inspiration from the French impressionists and Scottish painters, including William McTaggart and Robert Gemmell Hutchison, he saw in Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery that his early paintings homaged. All these early paintings were signed "Hoggan". In a hint of the acquired exoticism to come, when he moved to Edinburgh in his thirties, he took his mother’s maiden name, and Jack Vettriano was born. In 1987 he applied to study Fine Art, but his portfolio was rejected. As a self invented artist, he nevertheless made waves quickly. A year after his rejection he submitted two paintings to the Royal Scottish Academy Annual Exhibition. They both sold on the first day. Vettriano’s work became ubiquitous, and over the next four decades he exhibited and sold all over the world. His best-known work, The Singing Butler, depicts an elegant couple dancing on a storm-swept beach accompanied by their butler and maid. It sold at auction in 2004 for £744,800 - a Scottish record at the time - and reproductions of the painting became the best-selling art print in the UK. The original purchase price for "The Singing Butler" was reported to be £1000. Despite Vettriano’s phenomenal rise and his work’s mass appeal, the Fife born painter was never fully accepted into Scotland’s art establishment. His work was often pooh-poohed, both by critics and those in charge of national institutions. It took until 2011 for any to take his work, when his self-portrait "The Weight" was shown at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. But in an interview with the Radio Times, he responded: "They don't like an artist who is as popular as me because it takes away part of their authority. If they want to ignore me, let them. "I have what I want and that is the support of the public. "That means far more to me than the approval of a bunch of well-educated art buffs." In 2003, Vettriano was awarded an OBE for services to painting, and in 2004 he set up a scholarship with the University of St Andrews for students who would otherwise not be able to afford higher education. The first major retrospective of his work was held in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow in 2013. It attracted more than 136,000 visitors during its five-month run and was reported at the time to be the most successful commercial exhibition ever staged in Glasgow, breaking the attendance records of Kelvingrove’s 1948 Van Gogh exhibition. A further major retrospective was held at Kirkcaldy Galleries in 2022, focussing on his formative years and featuring several of his Hoggan signed paintings which had been loaned by private collectors. Among those who are known to have acquired Vettriano paintings were Jack Nicholson, Madonna, Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Terence Conran, Sir Tim Rice, Sir Jackie Stewart, Raymond Blanc OBE, Lady Eveleyn Lloyd (Eve Pollard) and Robbie Coltrane OBE. Vettriano continued to leave his mark, both on the commercial art economy, and on those who loved his work. His success may have been self-made, but he remained a people’s painter to the end and there is little doubt that his Publicist's words will prove to be accurate: "His evocative and timeless works will continue to captivate and inspire future generations." Pauilne McLean, Arts Correspondent BBC Scotland commented: Self-made, self-starting, Jack Vettriano gave a large section of the public what they wanted and the world is a little less colourful for his passing. It is believed that "Tug of War" is the first "Hoggan" signed Jack Vettriano painting to appear at auction since the artist's death (1st March 2025) was reported.