'Only the Deepest Red'

Recollections of the muse of Jack Vettriano,

by Grace Lambert-Phillips 

 

    The Bluebird, a private members' club of Terence Conran, was tucked away on a side street off the King’s Road in London — and it was there that I picked up my first collectible matchbox. Jack had encouraged me to start a collection, as he had told me that all the best places in London had their own matchboxes, and each one was unique — varying in shape, colour, and design. At the time, smoking was still permitted indoors, and wherever we went to eat, he would ask for two of their matchboxes — one he would give to me, and the other he would open, striking a match to light his cigarette. These little elegant boxes were like the calling cards of the day, and I would joyfully slip them into my handbag after we had carefully examined and admired their features.

     Conran had commissioned Jack to create a series of paintings for The Bluebird club, inspired by Donald Campbell and his Bluebird car, which he famously drove over the salt flats of Lake Eyre in Australia one summer’s day in 1964, breaking the land speed record. The matchbox for the club was long, slender, and cobalt blue to match the car, with the numbers 403.1 printed in bold white on one side — the land speed record of Campbell. The painting Birth of a Dream hung inside the club at the entrance and could be seen through the window from the street. It depicted Campbell standing before the freshly painted car, a cigarette in one hand and a paintbrush dripping blue paint in the other. This was always one of my favourite paintings of Jack’s. The atmosphere in that moment was breathtakingly beautiful. The story went that the car had been red, and the speeds that Campbell was looking for had been out of his reach. Somehow it was decided that the car should be painted blue; and it was after this transition that the success finally came. Jack always had this way of drawing out the poetry and bringing it back to a single, fated moment. That it all turned around in some kind of alchemical magic on the turn of a colour as though the record speed was inevitable before the paint had even dried.

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Release 2026.