A self-portrait David Bowie painted in 1996 — unseen in public for nearly three decades — is going under the hammer for the first time. The work will be offered at Sotheby's Modern British and Irish Art Day Auction in London on 15 October, estimated at £35,000 to £55,000 ($46,000 to $72,500), and is on public view ahead of the sale. Executed on paper, the portrait shows Bowie staring directly at the viewer, a composition that emphasizes his anisocoria — the uneven pupils that gave him his famously mismatched-looking eyes. What makes the work genuinely unusual is its physical intimacy: Bowie pressed two of his own handprints into the lower corners of the sheet, leaving what Sotheby's describes as the closest thing to a physical trace of the artist that a collector could own. Bold color and gestural brushwork reflect the German Expressionism that took hold during his Berlin years recording Low, Heroes, and Lodger between 1976 and 1979, as well as his admiration for School of London painters Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff, whose work he collected. The painting belongs to a group of eight large-scale self-portraits Bowie made during a prolific mid-1990s painting period, and it is widely regarded as the most expressive of the set. Bowie gifted it to his St Ives gallerist, who sold it to a private collector shortly afterward; it has remained in that collection ever since, which explains its long absence from public view. Auction appearances by Bowie's paintings are exceptionally rare. Very little has been published about his painting practice, there is no catalogue raisonné or definitive record of the body of work, and only two Bowie self-portraits have previously come to auction. The sale follows Sotheby's landmark 2016 "Bowie/Collector" auction of the musician's own art collection, and it is expected to renew collector interest in a lesser-known chapter of one of popular culture's most restless creative lives.