Rare Banksy painting sells for US$5.5 mn at London sale

In this undated handout photo provided by Sotheby's, Mark Hoppus of Blink-182 poses by his painting Crude Oil (Vettriano) by Banksy (2005), sold by Sotheby's on March 4 with some of the proceeds going to victims of the Los Angeles wildfires. (Max Montgomery/Sotheby's via AP)

A rare painting by street artist Banksy which reimagines Jack Vettriano’s famous “The Singing Butler” sold for nearly 4.3 million pounds (US$5.5 million) at an auction in London, Sotheby’s said on Tuesday.

The sale of Banksy’s “Crude Oil (Vettriano)” comes a day after the death of Scottish painter Vettriano, 73, was announced.

Vettriano’s “Singing Butler” depicts a couple in evening dress dancing on a windswept beach accompanied by a butler and a maid holding umbrellas. It set a Scottish record when it was sold at auction in 2004 for £744,800.

It became the UK’s best-selling print reproduction, outselling Monet and Van Gogh and inspiring Banksy to subvert its romantic narrative for his own painting.

In “Crude Oil (Vettriano)”, which is sometimes called “Toxic beach,” Banksy reworks the scene to add a sinking oil liner and two men in hazmat suits wheeling a barrel of toxic waste onto the beach.

The painting was sold at Sotheby’s by US musician and record producer Mark Hoppus, co-founder of pop-punk band Blink-182.

“Banksy used his trademark humour and irony to produce an image that tackles pressing issues of the 21st century -– such as the environment, pollution and the capitalist landscape,” Sotheby’s said ahead of the auction.

The work felt “more relevant today than ever before given the increasing frequency of natural disasters”, it added.

The painting was first exhibited in Banksy’s landmark 2005 exhibition “Crude Oils: A Gallery of Re-mixed Masterpieces, Vandalism and Vermin”.

‘Laughter and tears’

Hoppus said his family had loved the Banksy painting ever since they bought it.

“It’s seen laughter and tears and parties and arguments. Our son has grown up in front of it,” he said.

But he wanted now to use some of the proceeds from the sale to “buy works from younger, upcoming artists”.

The sale coincided with tributes to the self-taught Vettriano, whose famous fans included Hollywood actor Jack Nicholson.

Vettriano’s body was discovered at his flat in Nice, southern France, at the weekend, his publicist said.

Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney said he had overcome humble beginnings to become a household name and produce “iconic” paintings that had “graced the walls of homes and galleries around the world”.

Brought up in poverty in an industrial seaside town in eastern Scotland, Vettriano left school at 15 to become a trainee mining engineer.

He took up art after a girlfriend gave him a box of watercolours for his 21st birthday.

But despite commercial success, Vettriano failed to find favour with the art world elite.

In 2015, he dismissed critics who had panned his work as “brainless” and “dim erotica”, telling one interviewer they didn’t like an artist “who is as popular as me because it takes away part of their authority”.

Banksy -- whose identity has not been publicly revealed -- is best known for his hard-hitting murals, often using a distinctive stencilling style that frequently pop up on buildings and walls.

The enigmatic artist boasts an A-list client lineup and has sold his works for tens of millions of dollars at auction since the early 2000s.

Hoppus will donate a portion of the proceeds to two Los Angeles medical charities and the California Fire foundation, following devastating wildfires there in January, Sotheby’s said.