Banksy’s ‘Devolved Parliament’ Depicting MPs As Chimps Sells For Record £9m

A painting by Banksy showing the House of Commons overrun with chimpanzees has sold at auction for just under £9.9m.

The 4m (13ft) wide artwork Devolved Parliament was painted by the anonymous Bristol artist in 2009. Expected to fetch up to £2m, it sold for nearly five times its estimate at Sotheby’s in London on Thursday.

Banksy reacted on Instagram, saying it was a “record price for a Banksy painting” and “shame I didn’t still own it”.

‘Bidding battle’

Sotheby’s tweeted the painting had sold “to applause at £9,879,500 – nine times its previous record – after a 13-minute bidding battle”. The auction house said: “Regardless of where you sit in the Brexit debate, there’s no doubt that this work is more pertinent now than it has ever been.”

However, the record-breaking price was seemingly questioned by the elusive artist who posted a quote from Robert Hughes on his Instagram account, stating: “Instead of being the common property of humankind the way a book is, art becomes the particular property of someone who can afford it.”

Devolved Parliament is the artist’s biggest known work on canvas.

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