He has sung about his love affairs with some of the world's most glamorous women and spoken of his controversial devotion to hunting in the British countryside. But now Bryan Ferry is revealing another side of his character, with the first public showing of his art collection.
The exhibition, called Modern British Masters: Pictures from the Bryan Ferry Collection, is going on show this weekend at the London International Fine Art Fair in Olympia.
It includes pictures by Augustus John and Vanessa Bell, including the former's well-regarded 1903 portrait of Wyndham Lewis. Others in the 15-picture exhibition include works by Walter Sickert, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and the little known painter best known for his work during the first world war, Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson.
Ferry said: "They seem to suit the house I have in Sussex. If I lived in a Manhattan apartment I suppose I might have collected more contemporary things, but as it is my house is Victorian/Edwardian so much of it is modern British. I thought I would specialise."
The 64-year-old said he had collected his works over a long period but that his most intense phase of buying was during the 1980s, when he was at the height of his musical fame with the release of the hit 1985 album Boys and Girls.
Ferry studied fine art at Newcastle University and taught pottery at Holland Park school in London before starting his musical career with Roxy Music. It was once said by a friend, the interior designer Nicky Haslam, that he was more likely to redecorate a hotel room than trash it.
However, Ferry has not picked up a paintbrush since 1972 and he said he had no plans to do so. "In some ways I am interested in pictures as ways of decorating but I don't imagine I will paint again," he said. Ferry is also known for contributing heavily to the carefully crafted designs of his many album covers.
He added that he had no idea how much his collection was worth and that he had no plans to follow in the footsteps of the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and bequeath his collection to the nation.
"I have four sons and I think they have a vested interest in some of the pictures," he said. "And I don't really have macabre thoughts about my death."
Ferry said that he liked most contemporary art, especially that of Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, and considered a number of contemporary artists as his friends.
"However, it is like music: there is a lot of it so most of it is bad," he said.
The Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones was impressed by the list of artists and work on display. "I thought he might have had paintings by Beryl Cook or someone trendy like Damien Hirst but that is a very impressive list – he is clearly a very serious collector. You do find some celebrities try to be snobby or elitist about their collection but this suggests something else.
"They aren't fashionable painters as such but it obviously shows a real engagement with modern British art. Vanessa Bell and Augustus John are British modernists in the era of Picasso and although the weren't as revolutionary as Picasso they were really important. Why shouldn't a musician have good taste? He was an artist himself after all."