Leader: Vettriano still outside the establishment

AFTER more than a decade of official opposition and resistance and seven years after his painting The Singing Butler broke auction records for a Scottish picture, selling for £744,500, the artist Jack Vettriano has finally made it to the National Galleries of Scotland.

Those expecting a Vettriano classic - the haunting suggestibility of a smoking woman in stockings, suspenders and high heels - may be disappointed by the painting selected, a sombre self-portrait of the 59-year-old artist on his own, sitting on a bed, deep in thought.

Is Vettriano and his highly stylised, 1950s advertising era compositions "art"? Controversy continues to rage both over his work and today's definition of art - if definition there be. In recent years it has been hard to tell the difference between what is now accepted as art and what are fashionable phenomena. Scotland's art establishment, which has never before accepted Vettriano's work - its popularity only seemed to condemn it further in the eyes of the Gallery gods - has neatly swerved round this problem by admitting a painting to the Portrait Gallery. Inclusion here can be justified on the grounds that Vettriano is now a well-known national figure. But the canvases of fetish erotica will still have to cool their stiletto heels outside.