Jack Vettriano grew up in the industrial seaside town of Methil, Fife.
He grew up in poverty with his mother and her and older brother, in a
spartan miner’s cottage, sharing a bed with his brother and wearing
handed down clothes. From the age of 10, his father sent him out
delivering papers and milk, cleaning windows, picking potatoes, any job
that could earn money. His father took half his earnings .[no-sidebar]
Vettriano left school at 16 and later became an apprentice mining
engineer. Vettriano did not take up painting as a hobby until the 1970s,
when a girlfriend bought him a set of watercolours for his 21st
birthday.
His earliest paintings, under his birth name "Jack Hoggan", were copies
or pastiches of impressionist paintings, his first painting was a copy
of Monet's Poppy Fields.
Much of his influence came from studying paintings at the Kirkcaldy
Museum and Art Gallery in neighbouring Kirkcaldy. In 1984, Vettriano
first submitted his work to the Shell-sponsored art exhibition in the
museum.
