The death of Jack Vettriano the self-taught Scottish artist, prompted this post. His painting. The "Singing Butler," became the one of which there were more prints displayed in homes, than any other painting. It overtook this of another self-taught artist, the Russian, Vladimir Tretchikoff, who spent most of his life in South Africa He was the artist my wife and I met back in the seventies. We were shopping in a Manchester departmental store and we stumbled across an exibition being held there of his paintings on a top floor. The object of course was to sell the prints. We spent quite some time looking at the originals on display. We much preferred those of his animals. There weren't many people there. This guy approached us and introduced himself as the artist. We told him how much we liked his work and he spent some with us explaining how he came to paint several. Of course we couldn't afford at the time to buy any of his prints. There's been a documentary on Jack Vettriano, I think on BBC TV. So it will now, probably be repeated.
