A Banksy painting from the artist’s pivotal Crude Oil series sold for £4.3 million ($5.5 million) at Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Evening Auction in London on Tuesday.
The work came from the collection of Mark Hoppus, co-founder of the pop-punk band Blink-182. Hoppus acquired it in 2011. It was estimated to fetch £3 million to £5 million ($3.8 million to $6.3 million).
The painting debuted at Banksy’s headline-making 2005 exhibition, “Crude Oils: A Gallery of Re-mixed Masterpieces, Vandalism and Vermin,” held in an empty shop in London. This landmark show featured the artist’s reinterpretations of famous masterpieces, critiquing environmental destruction—alongside an unexpected addition: live rats roaming the gallery.
Mark Hoppus at home with Banksy’s Crude Oil (Vettriano). Photo: Max Montgomery.
Banksy drew inspiration for Crude Oil (Vettriano) from Scottish artist Jack Vettriano’s iconic 1992 painting The Singing Butler, which depicts an elegantly dressed couple dancing on a windy beach, surrounded by uniformed servants shielding them from the elements with umbrellas. Reproductions of Vettriano’s work became the best-selling artwork in Britain. When the original painting went under the hammer at Sotheby’s Hopetoun House sale in 2004, it sold for £744,800 ($1.3 million), according to Artnet Price Database—a record at the time for any Scottish painting.
The sale of Banksy’s interpretation comes just days after Vettriano died, aged 73.
In the street artist’s version of the beach scene, the glamorous couple continues dancing along the shoreline, and a butler is still protecting them with an umbrella. But the futility of this gesture is underscored by two men in yellow hazmat suits wheeling a barrel of toxic waste away from the beach. The sea, pristine in Vettriano’s version, is now polluted, in part due to a sinking container ship visible on the horizon. The artwork serves as a commentary on environmental degradation and capitalism in today’s society.
“The real damage done to our environment is not done by graffiti writers and drunken teenagers, but by big business… exactly the people who put gold-framed pictures of landscapes on their walls and try to tell the rest of us how to behave,” Banksy said in a 2005 statement.
Jack Vettriano’s The Singing Butler at Hopetoun House ahead of its sale in 2004. Photo: Andrew Milligan – PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images.
Banksy’s auction record stands at £18.4 million ($25.4 million, after fees) for the 2021 sale of Love Is in the Bin, the work famously shredded half of itself during a live Sotheby’s sale in 2018, according to the Artnet Price Database (sales records are based on U.S. dollars exchange rates at the time of transaction). The work was retitled Girl Without Balloon when it was shown in Seoul in 2023.
Among Banksy’s the top five auction records, two are works featured in the “Crude Oil” exhibition. Sunflowers from Petrol Station, Banksy’s reinterpretation of Van Gogh’s sunflowers, sold for $14.6 million at Christie’s New York in November 2021, making it his third most expensive auctioned work. Show Me the Monet, a tribute to Monet, fetched £7.6 million ($9.9 million) at Sotheby’s London in October 2020, ranking as his fifth highest auction sale.
Crude Oil (Vettriano) was acquired by Blink-182’s frontman Hoppus and his wife Skye in 2011 from a private collection, shortly after the couple moved to London from Los Angeles with their son.
Mark Hoppus attends the 2024 Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) Gala. Photo: Alberto Rodriguez/Variety via Getty Images.
“We loved this painting since the moment we saw it,” Hoppus said. “Unmistakably Banksy, but different. It’s borne witness to our family over these past dozen years. The vocalist, bassist, and producer said it hung over the table in London where his family ate breakfast and our son did his homework, as well as in their former living room in Los Angeles. “It’s seen laughter and tears and parties and arguments. Our son has grown up in front of it. This painting has meant so much to us and been such an amazing part of our lives, and now I’m excited for it to be out there in the world, seen by as many as possible.”
The sale will take place ahead of Hoppus’s publication of his memoir Fahrenheit-182, due out on April 8. The couple plans to use part of the sale proceeds to expand their art collection, focusing on works by younger artists. A portion will also go to charities including the Child Life Program at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Cedars Sinai Hematology Oncology Research. Additionally, some of the proceeds will go to the California Fire Foundation in light of the wildfires that caused widespread destruction and displacement in L.A. in January.
This article was updated on March 3 at 3:30 a.m. ET.
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