Banksy's 'Crude Oil (Vettriano)' Copy Fetches £4.3 Million at Auction

A copy of Jack Vettriano's "The Singing Butler," satirically altered by Banksy and titled "Crude Oil (Vettriano)," was auctioned for £4.3 million (approximately €5.2 million). The artwork, part of Banksy's "Crude Oil Paintings" series, features two workers hauling a barrel of toxic waste and a wrecked tanker on the horizon, adding an environmental message to Vettriano's original scene. Sotheby's had estimated the Banksy copy to sell for between £3 million and £5 million. The piece was owned by Mark Hoppus, who had been diagnosed with cancer four years prior. Hoppus intends to use the proceeds to support a children's hospital in Los Angeles, cancer research, and the California Fire Foundation, following the Los Angeles fires. The original "Singing Butler" by Jack Vettriano, a self-taught artist born Jack Hoggan, achieved its own auction success in 2004, selling for approximately £750,000. Vettriano, who passed away on March 1, 2025, in Nice, saw his work become one of the most popular and reproduced artworks in Great Britain, despite persistent criticism from the art world.