A rare painting by music icon David Bowie that was found in South River has sold for a record amount at auction.
The painting was located at a donation centre for household goods in the Almaguin Highlands community south of North Bay.
The painting, which is part of a series of approximately 45 works on canvas that Bowie titled Dead Heads (or D Heads), sold for more than 10 times the low-end of the auction estimate to a private collector in the United States for CAD $108,120 (inclusive of Buyer’s Premium).
The sale marks a new global auction record for a work by David Bowie, more than doubling the 2016 sale of a D Head series artwork for £22,500 (approximately $39,000 CAD) in the United Kingdom.
The painting drew almost 50 bids from across Canada and as far as Australia.
“Our gallery was inundated with calls and interest for the Bowie painting throughout the duration of our Online Auction of International Art. It’s a phenomenon we call the Hollywood Effect, when there is a famous name attached, or when there is an extraordinary set of circumstances such as rarity or human-interest story behind the artwork,” said Rob Cowley, President of Cowley Abbott.
