He's the worlds most famous street artist and his work is loved by millions - including some big name celebrities - but who is Banksy?
For the best part of 30 years, people have been trying to work out who is the face behind the political and social street paintings. But now fans reckon they may have the answer.
Responsible for works including Balloon Girl, Love Is In The Bin and Slave Labour, he's the elusive street artist from Bristol whose murals attract crowds and sell for millions. Now locals admiring his latest tree-themed painting in London say a man who turned up on the scene at the weekend could have been the real Banksy. A man said to bear a striking resemblance to former public schoolboy Robin Gunningham - long said to be Banksy - was spotted beside the piece on Saturday morning.
The man spotted by the latest large Banksy mural that passersby think is the elusive graffiti artist (/ SWNS)The photos were taken beside the latest mural, which appeared on a wall in Hornsey Road on March 17 before later being vandalised with streaks of white paint. And it's not the first time Robing Gunningham's name has been associated with Banksy and his street murals.
The name Robin Gunningham was first revealed by a Mail On Sunday investigation in 2008 which reported that he is a former public schoolboy from Bristol.
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The newspaper published a photograph taken in Jamaica in 2004 showing a man with a bag of spray cans by his feet - he was identified as Mr Gunningham. Banksy is also believed to have gone by the name Robin Banks, and in 2017 the DJ Goldie referred to him in an interview on the Distraction Pieces podcast as 'Rob'.
Some graffiti fans think Banksy has been spotted at the scene of his latest work (/ SWNS)A local Banksy fan who took the pictures at the weekend told the Daily Mail: "I have been going to the mural for a whole week.
"On Saturday there were more security fences and CCTV up and a few people putting Perspex over the artwork. I went back at 10am to go have another look at what they were doing and saw this man who looks exactly like the photo I saw 20 years ago of Banksy. I found it weird he was putting up his own Perspex."
Banksy has also been linked with Massive Attack musician Robert Del Naja, also known as 3D who was once considered to be the city's first graffiti artist and a pioneer of the stencil art movement. The musician has been praised by Banksy as an early influence and the pair are said to be friends. However, fans were left convinced they could be one and the same after singer Goldie 'let slip' Rob's name while mentioning Banksy in a 2017 podcast interview.
Many believe that Robin Gunningham, pictured, is Banksy (YouTube)Whoever, the mystery man is, what we do know is that Banksy was born in Bristol in 1974, making him roughly 50, and was involved in the wave of street art that took Bristol by storm in the 1980s before bringing his work to London, LA and New York. His net worth is said to be $50million (£39.6million), according to Celebrity Net Worth - though he donates much of it to charity, instead keeping his income from sales of books and films about his work
Meanwhile, Banksy has some famous fans - he's sold works to singer Christina Aguilera, who owns a pornographic picture of Queen Victoria with a prostitute. Angelina Jolie owns his twist on a Manet painting in which a white family lunch under an umbrella watched by 15 starving Africans. The artist also created the artwork for Blur's 2003 album Think Tank and his Girl With Balloon painting self-destructed in a Sotheby's London saleroom when descending into a shredder in 2018.
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