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When an Edinburgh
couple paid £10,000 for a painting by Jack Vettriano in 1991, they didn’t
realise it was to prove the wisest investment of their lives.
For now the picture, Mad Dogs, is expected to fetch at least £250,000,
perhaps much more, when it goes up for auction later this summer.
The couple, who wish to remain anonymous, are among a group of about 25
private collectors who have decided to part with a total of 40 Vettriano
paintings, in the largest group of works by the Scottish artist ever to
come up for sale.
The value of Jack Vettriano's highly charged and iconic images has risen
quickly over the past two years, and collectors in possession of his works
are keen to exploit the trend following the sale in April of The Singing
Butler - the most frequently reproduced picture in Britain - for £744,800,
setting a record for a Scottish artist.
They have inundated the auctioneers, Sotheby’s, with offers to sell, and
the 40 selected for auction at the Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder,
Perthshire, on 1 September are expected to realise a total of more than £2
million.
Andre Zlattinger, the head of Sotheby’s Scottish pictures department in
London, said yesterday: "I could have taken 80 pictures. We have been
overwhelmed with interest since the sale of The Singing Butler and other
Jack Vettriano work at Hopetoun House. Collectors have seen the way the market
has progressed and are seeing it as a great opportunity. There is strong
demand for his work, here and abroad, and we expect the sale to attract a
large number of Vettriano enthusiasts."
Mad Dogs, painted in 1991, at about the same time as Jack Vettriano
painted The Singing Butler,
depicting two elegantly dressed women paddling on a beach, one holding a
parasol and the other being shaded by a man holding a parasol. Two or
three years ago, it might have been expected to fetch £50,000; a year ago,
perhaps £100,000. Now, following the success of The Singing Butler, and
with the likes of Jack Nicholson, Sir Tim Rice, Sir Terence Conran, Robbie
Coltrane and Sir Alex Ferguson all owning works by Jack Vettriano, it has been
estimated at up to £250,000.
Sir Alex’s interest in the work of his fellow Scot was confirmed earlier
this week when it emerged he had paid £130,000 for Along Came A Spider,
part of a current exhibition of 35 works by Jack Vettriano in London’s
Portland Gallery. The erotic painting features Vettriano’s girlfriend,
Tracey Clinton, 32, draped over a chaise lounge wearing a black cocktail
dress and long gloves.
Given the phenomenal interest in Vettriano at present, Mad Dogs could
fetch considerably more than the estimate of £250,000.
Two other Vettriano paintings have been afforded similar pre-sale
estimates of £200,000-£250,000, including Shades of Scarlet (1996),
featuring a man and woman leaning towards each other on a staircase, and
In Thoughts of You, with the profile of a shapely woman in stiletto heels
gazing towards a window. They, too, could well exceed expectations.
Several of Jack Vettriano’s more risqué works, featuring scantily clad women or
suggestive poses, are among the 40 on offer. These include Game On,
Strange and Tender Magic and Study for Mirror Mirror, all of which should
realise at least £50,000.
Jack Vettriano, originally a mining engineer from Methil, has become the
artistic sensation of his generation, overcoming criticisms of his
populist work as "colouring-in" and "semi-pornographic".
Vettriano, 53, has sold more than three million poster reproductions of
his works around the world and earns an estimated £500,000 a year from
royalties.
Reproductions of The Singing Butler, for instance, which shows a barefoot
lady in a red dress dancing with a dinner-jacketed man on a stormy beach,
while a butler and maid struggle to shield them from the weather with
umbrellas, outsells Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso and Warhol.
Prices for Vettriano paintings, usually completed at his £2 million studio
in Knightsbridge, London, have rocketed. Two years ago, the most ever paid
for one was just over £44,000.
Last month, the auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull, in Edinburgh, sold 14 works
which, although modestly priced, fetched almost £1 million in total.
Bonhams is selling seven paintings by Jack Vettriano, including a self-portrait, next
month. Publicly, it says they will fetch "more than £100,000", but experts
say it could be five times that amount
Paintings by Jack Vettriano can be found in private, corporate and public
collections worldwide. |
