Robbie Williams is hoping to buy a share in a £10 million Banksy artwork.
The 46-year-old singer is a keen collector of the street artist’s work and has joined a syndicate looking to purchase ‘Show Me The Monet’ – a parody of Monet’s 1899 painting ‘The Water-Lily Pond’ featuring dumped shopping trollies and traffic cones – which is expected to be the most expensive piece of Banksy art ever sold when it goes under the hammer in an online auction with Sotheby’s next month.
A source told The Sun: "Robbie knows art’s a safe investment. He’s a major player in a syndicate of enthusiasts who are understood to be keen on it. It could easily break the record for a Banksy."
Robbie already owns various artwork by the elusive street artist along with a number of other contemporary pieces.
The current record price for a Banksy artwork is his ‘Devolved Parliament’ piece – which depicts MPs as chimps – which sold for £9.5million last year.
The mysterious artist rose to fame in the early 2000s with his political street art that grew out of the Bristol underground scene and sees his art painted on walls, bridges and streets across the world.
However, his true identity has remained unconfirmed as graffiti is illegal, though many have speculated who he could be.
Many assume he is Robin Gunningham, after his associates and former schoolmates at Bristol Cathedral School supported the rumour, and a study in 2016 found that the path of Banksy’s works correlated with the movements of Gunningham.
However, others suspect Banksy could be Massive Attack frontman Robert Del Naja or Gorillaz artist Jamie Hewlett.
Filmmaker Louis Theroux recently claimed he met Banksy at a football match in 2001.
He recalled: "One of the other people in the box was a young artist. He was a little bit sheepish and wasn’t terribly outgoing.
"I said, ‘Alright, what do you do?’. He said, ‘I’m a street artist’. He gave me a little booklet of some of his art and it looked quite good. I kind of made awkward chit chat and I asked his name and he said, ‘Banksy.’ "