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 him from 1993 until 2007, he felt that he “was on a treadmill of doing exhibition after exhibition of men and women in all their romantic situations”.

He said: “There was a waiting list for work, but it is not all about money, so I set up my own publishing company and began taking on work that I would not normally do.”

Last year while in Monaco carrying out a commission for Sir Jackie Stewart, the motor racing veteran, he was approached by the Monaco Yacht Club to commemorate the centenary of its flagship, the Tuiga. As a Scot, Vettriano said he felt an immediate affinity with the famous yacht, which was built in 1909 by William Fife, in the family yard at Fairlie, on the Ayrshire coast.

However, anyone expecting pretty pictures of “blue sea, blue sky and a yacht cutting through the waves”, should think again, he said. He admits that he has attempted to “Vettriano-ise” the paintings, by adding his trademark suggestive scenarios in order to “sex them up”.

“I loved the yacht club’s dining room, but I wouldn’t paint an empty room. So what I have done is what I do with all my paintings; create a narrative. You have a woman dining on her own, with two wine glasses, and two napkins, so you know something is going on,” he said.

Vettriano, who began his working life in the coal mines of Fife, took up painting after a girlfriend bought him a watercolour set for his 21st birthday, but he did not become a full-time artist until 1988, when he submitted two paintings to a Royal Scottish Academy exhibition and both sold on the first day that they were displayed.

Despite being adored by the public — he is estimated to earn £500,000 per year in royalties from his posters, postcards and prints, while his paintings command extraordinary sums — he has no work in any of the national collections. “I think the simple fact is they just don’t like the work,” he said.

However, although Vettriano regards Scotland as his home, he feels more comfortable living anonymously in London. “It’s nice when people pass your table in a restaurant and say, ‘I like your work’, but some people look at me oddly in TK Maxx, as if, ‘You’re a millionaire, what are you doing here?’ I was brought up to bargain hunt.”

Another unwanted effect of his fame and fortune is that he has found it difficult to sustain relationships. After his divorce in the 1980s he frequented brothels, and openly concedes that he has bedded many of his models. Now, he says that he would like to settle down. “I’ve become a bit jaded of the merry-go-round of London, and I think I’ve made some poor decisions I regret about some women I have known. But maybe I am longing for something I don’t have. Maybe if you gave me a relationship and a child I would run a mile.”

For now, Vettriano is content with Nipper, his new Jack Russell, whom he describes as “my boy”. “He can’t say ‘I love you’, but I think he does.”

Written by Charlene Sweeney for timesonline.co.uk