A decade after Scottish self-taught painter Jack Vettriano’s breakthrough year, Bonhams over sees a very different sale. In April of 2004, Vettriano’s most famous image, The Singing Butler, was auctioned in his native Scotland for $1.3m. A few months later, according to Artnet’s auction database, there was a flurry of other strong sales. Eventually, his Bluebird at Bonneville re-tested the market highs at around $940k. Then the market for his work disappeared.
Now Bonhams is offering a dozen of the artist’s works, including The Road to Nowhere (above):
One of the most significant private collections of paintings by the celebrated Scottish artist, Jack Vettriano, is to be sold in a stand-alone auction at Bonhams Edinburgh on 31 March. The collection comprises 12 paintings and is estimated at £800,000-1,200,000.
All the pictures are fresh to the market and provide a cross section of the themes which have informed Vettriano’s work for many years. Some are familiar from illustrated books on the artist. Waltzers (estimated at £200,000-300,000), for example, is a well-known image depicting elegant couples dancing under a night sky. This theme is one of Vettriano’s most characteristic and relates, in spirit, to two other works in the sale: The Road to Nowhere, estimated at £150,000-200,000, and Missing Man II, estimated at £100,000-150,000, which depicts stylish figures on a beach.
