Nick Walker valuation
The Bristol stencil artist behind the Vandal, the bowler-hatted man with a paint tin.
Nick Walker was born in Bristol in 1969 and was part of the city's graffiti scene from the early 1980s, a decade before the generation that made it famous.
What a work by Nick Walker is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
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Bio
Nick Walker was born in Bristol in 1969 and was part of the city's graffiti scene from the early 1980s, a decade before the generation that made it famous. He worked on the film sets of Judge Dredd and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and developed a stencil practice that is technically precise and often multi-layered. The recurring figure is the Vandal: a man in a bowler hat and pinstripe suit, caught in the act of throwing paint, defacing something respectable with an air of complete composure. Moona Lisa and the Morning After skyline pieces are the images most asked for.
The market is largely in editioned screenprints and in hand-finished works, and the distinction between them is the thing to pin down: many editions were issued in a standard version and in smaller hand-finished or hand-sprayed variants, with different edition sizes and different value, and the difference is visible but easy to overstate or understate in a photograph. Unique works on canvas and on found objects also appear. Pencil signature, numbering and the publisher's or artist's certificate are the reference, and Bristol provenance is common and traceable.
Black Rat, See No Evil and New York
Walker's solo exhibition at the Black Rat Gallery in London in 2008 drew collectors who camped outside overnight, and Black Rat Press published many of his screenprints. In 2011 he painted one of his bowler-hatted figures across the side of St Lawrence House on Nelson Street in Bristol for See No Evil, the festival that turned the street into an open-air gallery. He has since made New York his home.
For a print, the publisher is the first thing to establish, since the same image was often issued in a standard version and in hand-finished versions with separate edition sizes. The publisher's records or certificate, the edition number and the description of any hand-finishing should all agree with what is in the frame.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
