After a lifetime’s work conjuring up the most risqué paintings, featuring men with women in various states of undress, Scotland’s most popular and best-selling artist, Jack Vettriano, has announced a dramatic change of direction: he intends to paint yachts.
This creative sea change comes amid other signs that, at 57, the notoriously rakish painter is mellowing. He has acquired a dog and harbors hopes of settling down, possibly even having a child.
In an interview with The Times, Vettriano said that after almost endlessly creating exhibitions for the Portland Gallery, which represented …

Investing in Art is perhaps something that was unheard of even 10 years ago. As we all know, famous masterpieces appreciate in value and not depreciate. Not often but sometimes it can be a wonderful deal when the piece of art fetches the returns on investment in a big way. Perhaps more rare is perhaps a masterpiece being discovered in an obscure flea market and sold off for ten times the price it was bought for. In this digital age however, it’s more and more difficult to separate the genuine …

Must-see: Picasso: Challenging the Past
From February 25 at National Gallery www.nationalgallery.org.uk
The National Gallery will break new ground as it stages a spectacular Picasso show. By tradition, 1900 had been this museum’s end point. After that, by tacit agreement, art was left up to the Tate. But now curators court a new audience with a blockbuster — this radical Spaniard’s relationship with the Old Masters. The sheer modernity of Picasso’s style was probably the most striking thing about him in his day. But actually he was curiously averse to selecting modern …

Simon Tarrent
Exhibits in the corridor.
Nature inspires Simon’s powerful and uncompromising paintings of light and colour.
Bold and swift use of oil is characteristic of his paintings, allowing him to capture the diverse qualities of the landscape that has inspired him. A mixture of influences is evident, from the spontaneous fluidity of Jack B. Yeats, to the vivid colours and raw emotion of Howard Hodgkin. Humphrey Ocean RA, commented that the brooding passion within Simon’s work is, “evocative of August Strindberg’s paintings, for their sense of foreboding”.
Fresh and contemporary, Simon’s unique new …

Monet
Not seen since its first showing in 1876 Monet’s Dans La Prairie which features the artist’s wife Camille goes under the hammer at Christie’s. The painting filled with colour in brush strokes that embody impressionism is expected to fetch around 15 million pounds sterling when it goes up for auction in an evening sale of Impressionist and Modern works in London on February 4. Other famous pieces including works by Toulouse-Lautrec, Modigliani, Sisley, Renoir, sculptor Henry Moore, Matisse and Van Dongen are also up for sale and are expected to …

kokoschka’s Istanbul painting
The Global economic downturn is forcing many art collectors to part with rare pieces by artists such as Amedeo Modigliani, Camille Pissarro, Oskar Kokoschka, Piet Mondrian and Edouard Vuillard. Works by some of these artists in particular, Pissarro and Modigliani have never been seen before auction. Whether the reason for parting with family heirlooms is that keeping them has proven to expensive over recent months or that collectors are simply looking for something else to invest their money in we just don’t know. However, what we do know …

London Art Fair 2009
Modern British and international contemporary art from 100 galleries (predominantly painting, but also sculpture, photography, prints, video and installation art) is shown at this venue in north London.
January 14-18, Business Design Centre, London
www.londonartfair.co.uk
Adults £11/£15 (in advance/on the door); five-day pass £25; concessions £9; children under 12 years go free with an adult.
Art Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East
Jan 30-May 6
After the gallery’s inaugural show – a muted response to art’s big red Chinese dragon – comes a …

Francis Bacon portrait of george dyer talking 1966
Born in Dublin of English parents, Bacon left home at the age of 15, traveling to London, Berlin and Paris. In Paris he visited a Picasso exhibition which inspired him to paint. In 1929, Bacon settled in London, where he designed Bauhaus-style furnishings and later, during wartime, joined the Civil Defense. His breakthrough as an artist came in 1945, when his three studies for figures at the base of a crucifixion caused a sensation at the Lefevre gallery. In this, as in may …

* Culture * Art and design * Art Turner winner
Art Turner winner’s greatest gamble: 5,000 of his original works for free Tyson harnesses power of the internet to spread art inspired by roulette wheel * Charlotte Higgins, chief arts writer * The Guardian, Tuesday December 9 2008 * Article history December, Broadway, Westminster, London - one of Keith Tyson’s History Painting prints, created using spins of a roulette wheel to determine where the colours fall …

John Everett Millais
Over the weekend, a 45 year old woman from Somerset England who was moving house had decided to have an antique table in her loft valued. Enter on to the scene auctioneer Duncan Chilcott with a keen eye for hidden treasures it would seem. Whilst making his way to the antique table he noticed a flat square object 14ins x 11ins in size. The auctioneer picked up the object and once he had disbursed the thick layer of dust that had gathered over the years, he realized …