London:
Johnny Depp on Thursday sold a collection of prints he’d made of Hollywood and rock icons for around £3 million (more than $3.5 million) through a British gallery chain.
The 59-year-old ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ star has spent millions on a bitter legal battle with his ex-wife, 36-year-old actress Amber Heard.
Depp wrote on Instagram on Thursday morning that the prints would be for sale online at Castle Fine Art, which operates a network of British galleries.
The art dealer posted a photo of Depp working on a portrait of singer Bob Dylan.
It said the collection of prints called “Friends & Heroes” was “a testament to those he knew well and others who inspired him as a person”.
The gallery quoted Depp as saying, “My paintings surround my life, but I kept them to myself and limited myself. No one should ever limit themselves.”
The works depict Dylan, the late actress Elizabeth Taylor, actor Al Pacino and Rolling Stone Keith Richards.
The gallery chain later posted a tweet saying that “Johnny Depp broke the internet” and that his website had crashed due to demand.
All prints were marked “out of stock” on Thursday night. There were 780 works of art.
Buyers paid £14,950 for a set of all four framed prints or £3,950 for a single print.
Depp won a $10 million award in a defamation lawsuit against Heard in the United States in June, while winning $2 million in damages after a counter-charge.
Heard is appealing the jury’s verdict, which was streamed live to millions and contained lurid and intimate details about the former couple’s private life.
Depp lost a libel suit against British tabloid The Sun in London earlier in 2020 for calling him a “wife beater”.
In another creative venture, the actor released an album with English rocker Jeff Beck this month.
The record has been poorly reviewed by critics, but broke into the top 40 in the UK.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)