David Bowie's art collection sold for more than £24 million at auction

David Bowie's personal art collection has gone under the hammer in the first of three auctions, with one painting fetching more than £7 million.

The 47 art works sold collectively for £24 million at the auction at Sotheby's in London, three times more than expected for the entire portfolio.

A 1984 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, titled Air Power, was the most expensive of the night, selling for nearly £7.1 million. Another Basquiat work, Untitled, sold for nearly £2.4 million, triple its £700,000 upper estimate.

A spin painting by Damian Hirst in collaboration with Bowie, Beautiful, Hallo, Space-Boy - a nod to Bowie's famous Major Tom Character - fetched £755,000.

The collection of largely modern British art also included Frank Auerbach's Head of Gerda Boehm, a work written about by Bowie, which sold for £3.8 million, more than 10 times its estimate.

The proceeds of the sale will go to Bowie’s estate, which together with Sotheby’s spent several months putting the auction together, said a spokesperson for the auction house.

Sotheby's said the auction was a "white glove sale", meaning every lot was sold.

The musician, who died in January aged 69, was a passionate collector of modern art and, during his life, kept his collection largely private.

He said of his love of art in The New York Times in 1998: "Art was, seriously, the only thing I'd ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it.

"It can change the way I feel in the mornings. The same work can change me in different ways, depending on what I'm going through."