We are delighted to announce that ‘Portrait of the Artist’ is to go on display at National Galleries of Scotland : Portrait 1 Queen St, Edinburgh from 1st March 2026 commemorating the anniversary of Jack’s passing. The painting will be on display until early 2029 when it will be swapped with another Vettriano ‘Homage to Fontana?’. The paintings are on loan from Jack’s estate.
Portrait of the Artist, painted in 1993, is an early self-portrait by Vettriano and was painted a year after The Singing Butler. It depicts the artist taking a break from painting at his Edinburgh flat where he had a studio. A dramatic depiction of light and shade sets the scene for a moment of contemplation. The artist’s paint-splattered clothes emphasise the task at hand.
The cinematic Homage to Fontana? was painted later in 1999. The title and slashes in the painted canvas reference the Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) whose slashed canvases of the 1950s and 60s blurred the distinction between two and three dimensions to create ‘an infinite dimension’. Vettriano invites us to follow his act of contemplation in relation to what lies beneath the surface and beyond. The painting returned to Edinburgh in July 2025 after its inclusion in a Vettriano exhibition at the Palazzo Pallavicini in Bologna and is the largest of three versions of this composition. This painting was also exhibited at the major retrospective of his work at Kelvingrove Art Gallery in 2013.
Portrait of the Artist by Jack Vettriano | National Galleries of Scotland