Sweet Bird Of Youth by Jack Vettriano

Vettriano is entirely self taught. A Scotsman of Italian descent, he began his career as a mining engineer in the Fife coalfields. The first public showing of his work was in 1989, since when his paintings have achieved worldwide recognition. Represented by London’s Portland Gallery since 1994, he has had solo exhibitions in London, Scotland, Johannesburg, New York and Hong Kong. In a remarkably short space of time, Vettriano has established a reputation as one of Britons most popular painters, with his work featured in private and corporate collections worldwide. Vettriano’s images are neo-realist – real in the sense that he portrays recognisable people in believable situations, yet heightened to that level of dramatic or romantic intensity, which fuelled the fiction of the Hollywood dream factory. You the viewer can draw your own conclusions.