A BANKSY has fetched more than £7.5 million - just days after it was revealed a man had tried to sell one of the artist's pieces, taken from a wall in Brighton, on Antiques Roadshow.
Banksy's reimagining of Claude Monet’s impressionist water lilies easily surpassed expectations when it went on auction at a Sotheby’s event in London on Wednesday.
The piece, which was created in 2005 and adds abandoned shopping trolleys and a traffic cone to the famous garden scene, fetched £7,551,600 against an expectation of between £3.5m-5m.
The painting is the second most expensive Banksy sold at auction, after the reclusive artist’s Devolved Parliament sold for £9.9m last year.
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- Fight to bring Brighton's Banksy home (and how it could help save seafront lido)
This comes after a man snatched a piece by the world's most famous street artist from Brighton seafront in 2004 before taking it on Antiques Roadshow to have it valued earlier this year.
Appearing on the popular BBC show, the man said: “I used to live in Brighton in the late 90s, early 2000s, and I was walking along Brighton seafront and I saw it on the lido (sic).
People from Brighton have been calling for the artwork, which could be worth more than £20,000, to be returned to the city.
It could give a boost to Saltdean Lido which is currently trying to raise £700,000 to pay for its restoration.
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