Peter Howson's powerful figuration work has made him one of the foremost British artists of his generation.

His heroic portrayals of the dossers and down-and-outs, misfits and hard men of his home town in Glasgow may have polarised political opinion, but they nevertheless caught the public and media imagination sufficiently to make him a celebrity in his own right; his paintings were bought by the world's leading galleries and collected by a starry list of private clients, including Madonna and David Bowie.