Many Jack Vettriano enthusiasts would be surprised, not to say mortified, by the contempt the cognoscenti have for him. He has been variously described as the art world’s answer to Geoffrey Archer, a painter of ‘dark erotica’ and purveyor of ‘ill-conceived soft porn’. I shudder to think that what the reviewer felt would be well-conceived softcore porn: it would probably involve Helena Bonham Carter.

The Guardian’s art critic Jonathan Jones described Vettriano’s paintings as “brainless” and said that Vettriano “isn’t even an artist”.

Vettriano did not appear out of nowhere. Before Tracy Emin and others made their way to fame and fortune in the 1990s, similar hyperbole surrounded a small group of Scottish artists. They lacked a nimble title: the Glasgow Boys were already busy and some of them were girls, and they weren’t about to appear drunk on TV or pickle big fish.

Despite this, his paintings had a wide circulation and the support of the fledgling ‘Modern Painters’ magazine. My favorite was Ken Currie, who is still making great movies today; But Adrian Wiszniewski (pronounced Wiszniewski), Steven Conroy, and Peter Howsen are also worth mentioning, though he wouldn’t make any big claims about his current work.

If these names mean nothing to you, I’m not surprised: your work is almost forgotten. The 1990s brought the unabashed conceptualism of the YBA, shaking Scottish etching artists out of history. However, Vettriano’s influences become much clearer when you get to know his work. The warm tonality and chiaroscuro come from Steven Conroy and not, as you might imagine, from Stella Artois commercials.

But Jack Vettriano never got into the Glasgow School of Art like the rest of them. And yet, a year after the GSA curt landed on his doormat, he refused to sell a couple of paintings at the Royal Scottish Academy and dealers were fighting over his work. The images then went as ‘viral’ as was possible before the internet, appearing on greeting cards. This turned out to be the perfect medium of him. To misquote Joyce Grenfell, if you were the kind of person who sent that kind of greeting card, that was the kind of thing you liked. Vettriano’s work spread like Mateus Rose on a carpet, with The Singing Butler becoming what Tretchikoff’s green-faced woman was to the previous generation.

Its appeal is not difficult to understand. Like many of his most popular images, it’s a perfect confection of romance, fantasy and nostalgia, with the aesthetic of the Nescafe ad. Vettriano’s works have struck a chord with a large (and, of course, largely female) audience, and in October 2005 the original of The Singing Butler sold for £740,000.

Those who delve into his work find a shadowy world of morticians in their forties plotting adultery, or possibly murder, in dimly lit hotels. The men wear braces and Brylcreem, and the women wear socks and smoke cigarettes. Judging from his wet-lipped performance in Desert Island Discs, this steamy erotica is the area of ​​his work that he considers most important. It’s easy to take cheap shots and I wonder if Mr. V’s core audience gets much out of this stuff.

There is an advanced how that Vettriano objectifies women. They are certainly an important part of his work and are often partially clothed. But they are hardly passive objects; he never paints a reclining nude. His women always seem to be in charge of something, possibly the hotel.

Popularity aside, how should we measure Vettriano as an artist? The fact that he offends those who think correctly should not lead us to false praise. It is certainly true that there are weaknesses in his drawing, though to admirers of artists like Manet and van Gogh, this criticism would sound a bit like a special plea. Sometimes retro is unintentionally comical. Vettriano’s success is due in no small part to the fact that he does something quite well that most contemporary artists would not do at all: Vettriano paints pictures that tell stories, and uses light to mold them in ways that only a painter can.

I can think of other artists who are capable of bathing a painting in the golden light of twilight, but not many. Vettriano deserves some credit for his ability. At a time when the old serious movie audience has been replaced ‘by a humbler crew, whose goal is not pleasure but self-improvement’ – as Larkin wrote of emerging readers of poetry in the late 1960s – it is comforting to see an artist who defends the principle of pleasure. As a light painter alone I would give him a pretty high score, even if you have to admit that his stories can seem derivative and superficial.