Critics hate him. Celebrities collect him. The public buy his posters in their millions: Jack Vettriano reveals the dark side that has made him our most controversial artist

He has so far sold an estimated 12 million posters of all his works worldwide. Forty of his images are currently available in a variety of published formats

Fetish, 1998: ‘This painting is quite dear to me. All men have codes. Certain things they like. Find the code and you can crack the man. This is me in the painting. The suspenders have got to be vintage. If you give me suspenders that aren’t real, I’m not playing,’ said Jack Vettriano

'My first solo exhibition was described as pornographic.
The day it opened, Edinburgh was in gridlock. People were climbing in toilet windows, desperate to see what all the fuss was about.’
Jack Vettriano’s work is a magnet for controversy.
For the likes of Jack Nicholson and Sir Alex Ferguson, both of whom own some of his racier paintings, the appeal is surely his relatively safe exploration of sexuality. Safe, but edgy and a little risqué.
‘It’s a huge draw. My feeling is that they want to step into the painting so long as they feel they can step out again. They don’t want to be stuck in that world.’
Surprisingly it is not his erotic works that Vettriano is best known for.
The Singing Butler, with a butler holding an umbrella over a dancing couple on a windswept beach, is one of Britain’s most popular paintings.
When it was auctioned in 2004 for just under £750,000, it became the most expensive painting by a Scottish artist.

The Singing Butler, 1992: ‘On a good day I’m very proud of it. I won’t start singing Congratulations here, but I think if something is popular it has to have something going for it. The Singing Butler shoved my prices right up. Till then a big painting of mine would fetch £2000 to £3000'

Not so impressive compared to Damien Hirst, who has made more than £300 million from his art, but Vettriano’s images have made him a very wealthy man.
What sets Vettriano apart from other British artists are sales of reproductions; his images adorn endless posters and postcards and are as iconic as the 1980s Athena poster of a hunky man cradling a baby.
Although he sold the original Singing Butler privately for just £3,500, and received no royalties when it was auctioned in 2004, he has so far sold an estimated 12 million posters of all his works worldwide.

'I'm scared of being called an old pervert. I won't deny I'm fascinated by women,' said Jack Vettriano

Forty of his images are currently available in a variety of published formats, but most royalties come from The Singing Butler and Dance Me To the End of Love. Bathed in nostalgia for the glamour of the 1940s and 50s, they earn him an annual six-figure sum.
But one of Scotland’s most successful artists, awarded an OBE in 2003 for services to the visual arts, has a darker, dangerous side.
People might be familiar with his romantic beach paintings.
But while many pictures have benign titles lifted from Leonard Cohen or Johnny Cash songs, they are inspired by visits to prostitutes, and  Vettriano’s own obsession with sex.
I meet Vettriano, 61, in his Marylebone gallery in London. He wears an off-white T-shirt, expensive-looking jeans, brown boots, a dark blue jacket, a few days stubble and dark yellow glasses: part Andy Warhol, part Damien Hirst.
He talks so quietly I have to lean in to hear. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t.
He likes nothing better than discussing sex and is so matter of fact it’s hard to tell if he’s testing or teasing me.
Most of his observations can’t be printed, but he isn’t threatening. Rather, he expects everyone to be as obsessed by sex as he is.

‘When the composer Ennio Morricone was asked about the three things that drove him, he said: “My heart, my head and my balls.” Those are the three things that drive a man,’ he smiles as he explains himself.
‘I grew up in the Methil Docks in Fife. There was a particular hotel where the prostitutes used to work. I was always fascinated by them. I used to visit a sauna in Edinburgh too. I took photos of some of the girls who worked there and later did paintings of them.

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Night Geometry II, 1996: ‘I got that title from a book by AL Kennedy. I know Alison quite well. She writes about how when you’re in bed with somebody you tuck your knees under theirs and caress their backs, making geometric shapes. Only in my painting they’re standing up. Jack Nicholson bought it’

‘I always take photos of my subjects. I’ve never been to art school and the one time I tried to paint a woman while she posed I realised I didn’t have any confidence – I used to give my work away quite regularly back before it was worth more.
'I produced a lot of work then. He waves his arms at the paintings on the gallery walls.
‘Prostitute… Not prostitute… Prostitute.’
He is not the first artist to use prostitutes in his work. Manet, intent upon capturing modern life, painted French ladies of the night in the 1860s.
Edgar Degas won notoriety for his own paintings of prostitutes. The Scots artist’s women are never naked.
Rather Vettriano paints a suspender or a high heel or a woman in an oversized man’s uniform. The subject matter has won him some famous fans.
‘Jack Nicholson appeared early on,’ says Vettriano. ‘I’ve never met him, but if you saw the paintings he bought, you’d say: “That’s Jack!” Two very sexy ones and two that are just a wee bit nostalgic. One of the sexy ones he’s got is Dancer for Money, after the Tina Turner song (Private Dancer).’
Vettriano may never have met Nicholson, but he has dined with another of his buyers, Sir Alex Ferguson.

Dance Me To The End Of Love, 1998: 'I love playing around with lyrics when I’m thinking of titles. Dance Me To The End Of Love is a Leonard Cohen song. When I first did the painting I had the couples dancing across the canvas from left to right, but then I changed it and had them dancing away from each other into the distance'

‘I’ve a place in Nice and he goes to a place not far from me so we had dinner. He’s astonishingly likeable. Great company. But I knew we couldn’t speak about art or books.
'We had to speak about football. No disrespect to him. It’s just the man he is. He’s football through and through. I did ask him for a signed Wayne Rooney shirt, but the b****** never sent it to me!’

Maybe Ferguson, famed for giving players a frank assessment of their limitations, could have given the artist some tips on coping with criticism; despite his commercial success, the artist has been regularly ‘hairdryered’ by the art establishment.
‘One of them in Scotland said all I do is colour in. Another said I paint by numbers.’
It must hurt, but Vettriano points out that such attacks have always pulled the crowds. He is upbeat today, but struggles with shifts in mood.

‘I suffer severe melancholia. Mainly because of the press. In 1998 I was accused of stalking a woman in Edinburgh. The police brought no charges, but I was devastated.
'My doctor said I was depressed and gave me pills. I took them for a few years before chucking them. They ruined my sex life...’

Along Came A Spider, 2004: ‘I was watching breakfast TV and crime author James Patterson was on. He calls his books after nursery rhymes. I had the title Along Came A Spider in my head. I’ve been in social situations where you know when the spider has arrived. You sense a girl coming in and think they’re great news but also bad news’

He often places himself in paintings, most regularly as the man lusting after the woman in stockings and suspenders, but Vettriano is wary of how he’s seen.
‘I’m scared of being called an old pervert. I won’t deny I’m fascinated by women and the fact they don’t know the power they’ve got.’
He does have a bad boy reputation. In February last year he was arrested in Kirkcaldy, Fife for drink driving and carrying amphetamine, and banned from driving for 18 months.
‘I’ve a very low alcohol threshold,’ he shrugs. ‘I’d been painting since early morning. I hadn’t eaten. I should’ve phoned the chip shop and they would’ve delivered a fish supper. I know it was wrong.’
Later this month, the people’s painter will defy those critics with the ultimate accolade, as the first major retrospective of his work opens at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery. Vettriano, inevitably, feels misunderstood. He is exceptionally pleased, then, about the accolade.
When he first exhibited in the early 1990s his work sold for no more than £3,000. Now his paintings cost from £25,000 to £125,000.
‘I don’t agree popularity means trash.

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The Weight, 2009: 'I get melancholic from time to time. I think that creative people simply do. The more questions you ask of yourself, the deeper s*** you get yourself into. When I was young, I never asked myself why. You just accept this is your lot'

'Even van Gogh would have sold reproductions to the working man for 20 francs. But the critics don’t think of my work as art. They think of it as top shelf stuff.

’They tend, in fact, to have more of a go at his style. One called his pictures ‘emotionally trite and technically drab’, another said he was ‘repetitive, limited and soulless.’
The fact Vettriano is self taught is part of the issue. He didn’t pick up his first paint brush till he was in his early 20s and then taught himself by obsessively copying Monet, Caravaggio and photos.
Most infamously, he copied poses from an artists’ reference manual. It emerged as the inspiration for The Singing Butler.
He doesn’t help his reputation when he talks about learning to paint.
‘I was rejected by Edinburgh College of Art. It was the best thing that happened. I’d never have done my own thing if I’d been to college. I didn’t know I was teaching myself to paint.

Sir Alex Ferguson (left) owns Along Came A Spider and Jack Nicholson (right) bought Night Geometry II

'I was just doing it as a hobby. All I did was copy. I’ve copied everyone. I like to think if you take all these (famous) artists and put them in a cauldron and stir it, Jack Vettriano comes out when you pour...
‘I didn’t expect a retrospective in my lifetime. One critic said I’m welcome to paint so long as nobody takes it seriously.’ Vettriano sighs, then smiles. 
‘The paradox is by writing about me my critics made me controversial... I’m not!’
He waves his arms around at his paintings again. ‘There’s nothing controversial here. It’s not soft porn!’
He stands and shakes my hand. ‘It’s quite cathartic to have talked to you. I would’ve paid my therapist £200 for this; you’ve done it free.’
And before I can think of an answer, he is gone.
Jack Vettriano: A Retrospective runs from September 21, 2013 to February 23, 2014 glasgowlife.org.uk