A new Banksy? Locals suspect tree mural which appeared overnight on the side of a building in north London could be the latest offering by the elusive street artist

A suspected Banksy artwork has appeared overnight on the side of a building near Finsbury Park in London.

The artwork shows a splattering of green which has been painted behind a bare tree to look like foliage, with a stencil of a person holding what appears to be a pressure hose next to it.

The artwork has already been gathering Banksy fans to the location on Hornsey Road in north London as they inspect it to see if it could be the real thing.

James Peak, who created the BBC Radio 4 series The Banksy Story, rushed to the scene after receiving a tip-off.

He told the BBC: ‘To my mind it looks like a dead cert.

‘But as ever with Banksy – you never quite know, until he fesses up by posting it on his website.’

Banksy fans have been keeping a careful watch on the secretive artist’s social media channels to see if the Finsbury Park painting, which appeared on Sunday, gets confirmed.

Mr Peak said the artwork had the hallmarks of a Banksy due to its clear message that nature is struggling and it is up to us to get it back.

He said another clue was the fact it was done with minimum effort but still looked really cool.

Banksy’s eye for detail could also be on display as the colour of the paint matches the one used for street signs by Islington Council.

The lack of leaves, despite it being Spring, could also have inspired Banksy to make the painting.

Local Islington Labour councillor Flora Williamson wrote on Twitter/X: ‘By far the most exciting thing to happen on todays canvass session on hornsey road was seeing that Banksy had come to Tollington over night. 

‘Lots of local interest – I’m a fan of it.’

A resident of the area Amy wrote on Twitter: ‘Proud new caretakers of an apparent new #Banksy piece in Finsbury Park… Woke up this morning to it on the side of flat. You can just about see us smiling proudly on our balcony.’

One local joked on social media: ‘Banksy came overnight and now my rent will skyrocket.’

Paul Drinot wrote on social media: ‘If this is a Banksy, it’s the best thing that’s happened to the Hornsey Road in years.’

The possible reveal of a new Banksy comes after the last time his art was revealed in London ended in scandal.

Two men were arrested and were bailed for allegedly using bolt cutters to steal the artwork which pictured a stop sign featuring three military drones.

Once Banksy announced on social media the artwork belonged to him in an Instagram post shortly after midday on December 23, two men appeared at the scene and cut down the artwork before running off.

Police have yet to recover the peice of art, but one gallery owner told the BBC at the time it could be worth up to £500,000.

It was widely interpreted by followers of the artist as calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. 

The Instagram revelation led to a stream of locals descending on the site and taking photos of the installation on their phones.

But at around 12.30pm, the peaceful scene was shattered by the arrival of two men, one of whom balanced precariously on an Lime e-bike while hurriedly hacking the sign down with bolt cutters. 

Pieces by the rogue artist have previously been sold for millions of pounds.

Banksy did not comment on the drama of the theft, but had been warned by a social media user: ‘The sign will be snatched pronto.’ 

The drones on the piece resembled those on another artwork, Civilian Drone Strike, which depicted them destroying a house while a little girl and her dog watch on in horror.

It was sold for £200,000 to raise funds in opposition to a London arms fair.

Banksy, whose career began in the 90s, is known by millions of people thanks to the appearance of dozens of iconic artworks in unexpected locations around the world, with many having gone on to sell for millions.

For years his identity has been a hot topic, with names such as Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja and Gorillaz founder Jamie Hewlett being floated around.

Also suggested is public schoolboy Robin Gunningham, who was ‘unmasked’ as Banksy by the Mail On Sunday in 2008 after an investigation into his past.

Regardless of who he his, Banksy’s works are hot property on the art market.

In 2021, his ‘Love is in the Bin’ work was bought for more than £18million, with its value having been boosted after a shredder hidden in its frame cut it to pieces moments after it was sold for the first time in 2018.

The work, previously known as ‘Girl with Balloon’, was just one of more than a dozen of Banksy’s creations that have sold for more than £2million.

Banksy uses art as a form of activism, regularly making societal and political statements with their works.

Having also sprayed his tag across Bristol, Banksy then evolved with the times and began creating more sophisticated pieces, whilst always keeping his identity hidden. 

One of Banksy’s earliest works is the The Mild Mild West.

The large mural was painted in 1999 in Bristol’s Stokes Croft and shows a teddy bear throwing a Molotov cocktail at three riot police.

It was painted by the artist over three days in broad daylight and is still in the city today, among some of Banksy’s other works.

The exhaustive MoS investigation into Banksy’s identity heard from dozens of friends, former colleagues, enemies, flatmates and even family members.

The search began with an image of a man in Jamaica at work with his stencils and cans of spray paint.

Although Banksy denied the image showed him, the Mail’s investigation was later backed by researchers at Queen Mary University.

They used ‘geographic profiling’ – a technique more often used to catch criminals or track outbreaks of disease – to plot the locations of 192 of Banksy’s presumed artworks.

The sites indicated ‘hot spots’ which were narrowed down to pinpoint an individual. Peaks within these clusters were found to correlate to a pub, playing fields and residential addresses closely linked to Mr Gunningham and his friends and family.

Mr Gunningham attended Bristol Cathedral School and was born in July 1973. A school photo of him bore a striking resemblance to the man in the Jamaica photograph.

A former school friend described him as being ‘extremely talented’ at art and admitted he would ‘not be at all surprised’ if he was Banksy.

In anonymous interviews he has done, Banksy has said he first became interested in graffiti at school.

And a fellow artist he was living with in Bristol in 1998, Luke Egan, went on to exhibit with Banksy at Santa’s Ghetto, an art store in London’s West End.

However, Mr Gunningham’s family denied that he was Banksy and the link was never explicitly confirmed.