'No gain' for notorious prisoner from artwork sale

A collection of 500 pieces of artwork by notorious prisoner Charles Bronson is set to be auctioned.

It is believed to be "the largest" sale of work by Bronson, now known as Charles Salvador, to come to the market and is expected to fetch between £100,000 and £200,000, according to the auction house.

Bronson, now 73, was first jailed aged 21 in 1974 for armed robbery and wounding. He became known for attacks on prison staff and other inmates, leading to him spending most of his life behind bars.

The owner of the collection, who asked to remain anonymous, said Bronson would not "gain anything" from the sale.

Bronson's crimes within the prison system include holding inmates and staff hostage.

In 1999, he took a prison education worker hostage for 44 hours at HMP Hull.

The works, which are said to have been produced over a spell of 25 years, are in a range of sizes, from A5 to A2, and drawn in crayons, pencils and ink.

• Who is Charles Bronson and why is he in prison

Coralie Thomson, from David Duggleby Auctioneers in Murton, near York, said there was "no sort of endorsement" for the prisoner.

"Work has already been sold various times [at auction]. We're getting it out there because there is obviously a market for it.

"Themes are related to Bronson's imprisonment, incarceration, and people he may have come across," she added.

Displays and sales of work by Bronson, who was originally named Michael Peterson before an initial name change in the 1980s, have previously attracted scrutiny and criticism.

In 2018 his work was removed from an auction raising funds for a homeless charity, while in 2010 a picture displayed as part of a wider art scheme on the London Underground was taken down.

However, a previous sale of Bronson works netted £30,000 and a sale of images by the 1960s East End gangsters the Kray Twins made £17,000.

Thomson said due to limited materials available within prison, the art was often created on old prison documents or "very, very thin paper"

"Porridge features very regularly, decades of eating porridge, and there's a spider in virtually all of them," she added.

Bronson is currently attempting to be paroled. In a letter to Sky News, ahead of his ninth bid to be freed, the prisoner reportedly described his sentence as "unlawful".

The owner of the artworks said they had placed the art in the sale on 11 March because it was "a shame for it to gather dust when it could be appreciated by someone else".

The seller would not comment on what they planned to do with the money made from the sale.