Rare David Bowie self-portrait with handprints to go on sale at Sotheby's on 15 October

Mixed · 2Sotheby's is to auction a 1996 self-portrait by David Bowie that includes two handprints he pressed directly onto the work, in its Modern British & Irish Art Day Auction in London on Thursday 15 October. 1 2 Mixed · 2The painting, done on paper, is estimated at £35,000-£55,000 (about $46,000-$72,500) and is on public view. 1 2 Mixed · 2Bowie gifted the piece to his St Ives gallerist, and it has stayed in the same collection ever since. 2 1

Mixed · 2It is one of eight self-portraits Bowie made during a prolific period of painting in the mid-1990s; Variety reports that all eight were snapped up immediately. 1 2 Centre · 1Sotheby's calls it "one of the most striking and personal self-portraits by David Bowie ever to appear at auction" and says it emphasises his famously asymmetric eyes, with the handprints in the lower corners making it "arguably the closest thing to a physical trace of Bowie himself that a collector could own". 2 Centre · 1Sotheby's says there is no catalogue raisonné or definitive record of Bowie's paintings, so examples at auction are exceptionally rare, and only two Bowie self-portraits have previously been auctioned. It describes this one as more direct in its gaze and more vividly coloured than those. 2

Left · 1Jen Hardie, Sotheby's director and senior specialist of modern British and Irish art, told Variety the work is "bold, colorful and unmistakably Bowie" and that it returns to Sotheby's a decade after the 2016 "Bowie/Collector" sale. 1 Left · 1"Bowie/Collector" sold more than 350 works from Bowie's private collection for £32.9 million ($43.4 million) and set 59 artist records, according to Variety. 1 Centre · 1Kate Chertavian, Bowie's longtime art adviser and curator, said she was part of his world when he made the series, which he painted in London, sometimes in a studio at her house and sometimes in hotel rooms. She called the self-portraits "among my favourites" and said they offer "a rare glimpse of David as a visual artist in his own right". 2

Left · 1Variety adds that Bowie admired German Expressionism from his Berlin years in the 1970s, and the School of London artists Leon Kossoff and Frank Auerbach, whose influence it sees in his own work. 1 Centre · 1The sale comes as events marking what would have been Bowie's 80th birthday on 8 January 2027 have been launched worldwide under the title Bowie80, according to the Evening Standard. Bowie died aged 69 on 10 January 2016 after an 18-month battle with cancer. 2