Peter Doig Biography

Peter Doig is a Scottish-born artist whose paintings have sold for millions of dollars, a testament to both his work and the extremes of the art market.

He spent his childhood in Trinidad and Canada and studied art in London, where he was based during the 1990s. He gained critical attention early on, and in the next decade Doig built a reputation as a painter of semi-abstract landscapes that were unabashedly influenced by Edvard Munch as well as Canadian landscape painters. After 2002, he was based out of Trinidad and making a good living; to his surprise, his paintings became a hot commodity among collectors and in 2007 one sold for $11.3 million, at that time a record for a living European artist (a record broken by a Lucian Freud painting).

His best known paintings include The Architect’s Home in the Ravine (1991), White Creep (1996) and Canoe-Lake (1997, inspired by a scene from the horror film Friday the 13th).

In 2016 Doig was taken to court by a Canadian who claimed to own a painting done in the 1970s, a painting Doig denied having done. The suit was filed by a former corrections officer, who claimed the painting — once valued at $10 million — was done when Doig was 16.  Doig was forced to prove in court that he did not do the painting; he used school records and testimonials from friends. Doig prevailed in August of 2016.