Tate Britain is the national gallery of British art from 1500 to the present day

If Wikipedia is correct, a question you should always ask about any entry in that wonderful collection of human history and nonsense,  then why hasn’t the Tate purchased at least one piece of Jack Vettriano’s work?    This is not an argument over whether Vettriano’s is a good or great painter, I think down in the good end of this spectrum.  No it is about art history and ensuring the record is complete for future generations.  I am sure there are many British artists who don’t have work in the august body’s collection but whether you like him or not Vettriano is a very successful British artist and so should be there.

Here, I think, is the rub of it all.  Vettriano is too successful for his own good.  If he had stayed some jobbing artist and not become a millionaire on the back of his work then you wouldn’t be reading this.  But he is successful and this rubs the nose of the many  ‘important’ artists and their supporters.  Here is some up start from a Scottish pit village producing quite ordinary works of art selling for outstanding amounts of money how can that be fair?  The art world is nothing if not jealous about other people’s success.  So in a fit of pique the art establishment appears to have decided to turn their backs on him.  Even in his native Scotland he all but despised in the art establishment.

One day the bottom may fall out of the Jack Vettriano art market and if that should happen I am sure there will be many members of the art establishment who will be overjoyed.  However, in a hundred years time when some art historian is trying to find his work he will not be able to look in the National Gallery of British Art’s collection.   This is wrong and should be corrected.