Fallen Angels: Paintings by Jack Vettriano

A collection of paintings by the popular artist Jack Vettriano, complemented by stories, poems, and dialogues by Scottish writers

Painter Jack Vettriano emerged from the unlikely background of the Scottish coalfields, unknown and untutored, and has seen his canvases hung in the Royal Scottish Academy, eventually becoming Scotland's most successful and controversial contemporary artist, his painting The Singing Butler selling for close to $1.2 million. This collection presents, alongside more than 40 Jack Vettriano paintings, stories, poems, dialogue from plays, and other fine examples of Scottish writing. W. Gordon Smith, playwright and art critic, has woven an anthology of new and old writing around the painter’s images, complementing them, matching their moods, and extending the lives of his characters beyond their frozen moments on canvas. Some of Scotland’s most accomplished writers have accepted the challenge to put their imagination into free fall and, by interpreting Vettriano’s paintings in such diverse ways, plunder some of their mysteries and perhaps go some way towards explaining their unique appeal.