As First Minister of Scotland, John Swinney has a lot on his plate. How he manages to get through it all is a mystery. There he was on Monday, his in-tray overflowing with this rolling crisis and that hot mess - NHS, ferries, the Trump visit, take your pick - yet still he found time in his busy schedule to be an art critic.

The occasion was the death of Jack Vettriano, age 73. Having passed on his condolences to the artist’s family, as is right and proper, the First Minister wandered slightly from his political brief to praise Vettriano’s “unique and evocative contribution to artistic life in Scotland”.

Unique and evocative, eh John? Where Tony Blair once felt the hand of history on his shoulders, the manicured paw of art criticism had prodded the First Minister into taking a position on Vettriano. And take a position one must. Everyone’s a critic when it comes to the former apprentice mining engineer turned best-selling international artist.

As the tributes came in, it was clear there was a right side of the debate to be on, and a wrong side.

On the “right” side were those who cited Vettriano’s huge popularity, the high prices his work fetched at auction, and the retrospective at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery that drew a crowd of 135,000 and was the most successful in the gallery’s history. More than one paper called him “the people’s painter”, his images adorning walls throughout the land.

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© Herald Scotland