Only the Deepest Red - A Recollection

I'm writing my first book, centered on my memories of friendship and collaboration with the Scottish-Italian painter Jack Vettriano. Last summer, I visited Jack at his studio and home in Nice, travelling there from Florence by train, via Milan, and ultimately reaching the long stretch of railway that hugs the Mediterranean coastline to the border of France. This coastal journey has always captivated me; the Côte d'Azur earns its name for good reason, as I breathed in one azure bay after another, each extending toward the horizon a little further than the last.

Jack was about to turn 72, and we hadn't seen each other in nearly a decade. This was his first trip to his European home since before the lockdown, which he had spent in Edinburgh. I can only imagine the joy that must have surged within him as he stepped off the plane, his eyes adjusting to that brilliant Mediterranean light once more. I arrived in the early evening of that late summer day and stood outside the door, "VETTRIANO" engraved on a brass plate beside the smooth, rounded button I had just pressed. The last time I saw Jack in Nice was in 2012, when he lived in a spacious apartment on the third floor of an art deco building along the Promenade des Anglais, next to the famous Le Negresco Hotel. That elegant, sun-filled place featured a small balcony with a view of the esplanade and the sea, where the distant hum of passing planes featured in the daily activities.

His studio was a sanctuary of space and light, ideal for painting. A large easel stood by the tall windows, accompanied by a wooden palette cluttered with half-squeezed tubes of oil paints in an array of vibrant colors, alongside a collection of mismatched caps, cigarette stubs, and ash. Jack would often tell me, almost proudly, that he sometimes took paint directly from the tubes with his brush—a practice I had always been told not to do. But Jack followed his own rules. Self-taught, he had never been bound by the conventions of art school, nor did he feel the need to adhere to them.

I joyfully photographed the details: art deco furniture perfectly arranged, a needleless gramophone, sculptures, and vases on marble, all reflecting beautifully in the large, pristine mirrors. The way the light danced between the art deco elements and the sea felt like heaven to both me and my lens. I longed to see that previous place again, but Jack had moved to a smaller apartment just around the corner a few years prior—“I just didn’t need four bedrooms,” he had told me.

So, there I stood in front of a different door, outside another art deco building in Nice, holding a heavy vintage case in one hand and a camera bag in the other. When the door opened, Jack greeted me with a warm smile, his eyes sparkling in the evening light. His hair, now all silver, remained thick and curly, partly held back with a Kirby grip to keep it out of his face. It had been ten years since we last saw each other; his face showed signs of age, but his eyes still glistened as they always did when inspiration struck, as if a painting were coming to life in his mind, colors and details coming to life in his imagination.

Jack has always been, above all, a visual person in search of what he describes as "visual pleasure." Nice suits him well in that regard, with its pristine art deco buildings stretching in every direction, designer vintage stores around most corners, and an abundance of light and color—deep blues and reds, pale green shutters against light walls. Its very filmatic as a place, its almost Wes Anderson style, I can see why Jack likes it so much.

That evening, as we walked down Rue de France toward Jack's favorite Italian restaurant, he wore 1950s white pointed winklepicker shoes, one lace broken and only laced halfway. I was reminded of the poetry and ease I felt when I first worked with him in London. Back then, we would stroll through his Knightsbridge neighborhood, visiting his local haunts during the height of his fame, while I was a young photographer experimenting with film. I absorbed it all, collecting memories in my mind and on film, as well as in the shape of matchboxes—souvenirs from the restaurants we frequented.

With each step that evening, familiar pieces of our shared past rose up around us, mixing in the air as we reminisced on that warm late summer night on the Côte d'Azur, perhaps signalling the start of a new chapter.

Only the Deepest Red narrates a journey that begins in a bookstore in Scotland and winds its way through London, France, and back again, ultimately leading to Italy. It is here that Jack begins to explore his roots. Conversations unfold about a small Italian town perched on a hill, the very place where his grandfather left as a young man to seek a new life on the east coast of Scotland, where Jack would eventually be born. I will be working on these recollections throughout the coming year, with the aim of completing the collection by the fall of 2025.