Vettriano's paintings depicting groups of figures regularly have a feeling of stillness in between motions and unease, leaving the work's message clearly open to the viewer's own interpretation. With this colour palette, the spectators are left with a sense of mystery.

Jack Vettriano OBE, born 1954

Vettriano left school at sixteen to become a mining engineer in the local coalfields at Methil, Fife. He had been keen on drawing as a child, but it was the gift of a set of watercolour paints for his twenty-first birthday that began his love of painting. Entirely self-taught other than taking a few drawing classes at night school, Vettriano first attracted attention when he showed two works at the Royal Scottish Academy annual exhibition that sold on the first day. The following year three works were included in the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. Since then he has had a series of solo exhibitions, and in 1997 he completed a commission of six paintings for Sir Terence Conran's Bluebird Club and Restaurant in Chelsea.