How David Bowie Became a Connoisseur

Colin Gleadell uses his long experience, sharp eye and detailed knowledge of British art to give us a much clearer sense of David Bowie’s interests and behavior as an art collector.

The story is telling—and well worth reading—because Bowie became a connoisseur by going deep within the genre of Modern British painting with an emphasis on figurative art, hardly a fashionable category over the last several decades.

More than that, Bowie had a strong and fruitful collaboration with one dealer who was his mentor and fellow traveler:

The dealer closest to Bowie was Bernard Jacobson, a specialist in Modern British art at the time. In the mid-Eighties, Bowie began visiting his gallery interested in the deconstructed, figurative carvings of Glynn Williams. Soon he had developed an interest in many of the artists Jacobson dealt with.  “He had a fabulous eye, and he was passionate,” remembers Jacobson. “He read a lot and learned fast. He bought examples by major British artists such as Ben Nicholson, Stanley Spencer, David Bomberg, Leon Kossoff and Frank Auerbach as well as some of the lesser known – Euan Uglow, Victor Willing and William Tillyer. He also bought a lot at auction.”

David Bowie: the man who bought the art world (Telegraph)