Jack Vettriano in 2002
Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/the Guardian

An illustration from an art illustrator’s Figure Reference Manual gave Vettriano inspiration for his painting The Singing Butler. The painting was one of his most famous, selling for £744,800 in 2004 and it has been reproduced more than three million times
Photograph: Jack Vettriano

The Singing Butler goes under the hammer at a Sotheby’s spring auction at Hopetoun House in West Lothian in 2004
Photograph: Murdo Macleod/the Guardian

Vettriano in his studio in 2004
Photograph: Karen Robinson/the Observer

Vettriano’s Back Where You Belong
Photograph: Jack Vettriano

The likes of Jack Nicholson, Tim Rice and Sir Terence Conran bought his work
Photograph: Murdo Macleod/the Guardian

Vettriano’s The Drifter
Photograph: Jack Vettriano

Vettriano with his painting The British Are Coming, which fetched £114,000 at Sotheby’s in 2007
Photograph: Tina Norris/Shutterstock

Vettriano at home in west London
Photograph: David Sandison/Alamy

Vettriano’s Sweet Bird of Youth study
Photograph: Jack Vettriano

Vettriano’s The Billy Boys on display at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow in 2013
Photograph: PA/Alamy

Vettriano’s Bluebird at Bonneville, which sold at Sotheby’s for £486,000 in 2007
Photograph: Jack Vettriano

Vettriano at Bonhams in Edinburgh, standing beside his Winsor & Newton easel on which his early works were painted – part of a sale of his possessions which was held by the auction house in 2014
Photograph: PA Images/Alamy

With his work The Missing Man II, which sold for £112,900 at Bonhams auctioneers in Edinburgh in 2015
Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
