A supermarket soup painted by Bristol-born graffiti artist Banksy topped the bill at an urban art sale that looked to have been hit by the credit crunch.

The street painter's oil canvas, entitled Tesco Value Tomato Soup, was sold at auction for £117,600 – smashing its £80,000 estimate.

It was the most expensive item at the Bonhams' sale in London last night, and while other Banksy pieces were also sold nearly a third of the auction's items failed to find a buyer. A total of 74 of the 122 lots were sold.

A Bonhams' spokeswoman said bidders scrambled for Banksy's Tesco Value Tomato Soup work – painted in the style of Andy Warhol's famous Campbell's Soup picture.

She said: "A bidding war broke out for it. It was jam-packed in the auction room but it was soon whittled down to two contenders."

The spokeswoman added that the sale had created a "great deal of interest" but admitted it was "difficult to say" whether it has gone as well as hoped.

Banksy's picture of Kate Moss in a Marilyn Monroe-style pose went for £66,000, lower than its £70,000 top-end estimate. And Turf War, featuring a moody-looking Winston Churchill with a green mohawk haircut, fetched £60,000 which was well down on the £80,000 the auction house had been hoping for.

Other works by the artist failed to sell including picture of a girl holding an ice cream bomb, whose estimate was as much as £50,000.

Earlier this week a prestigious Sotheby's contemporary art sale also failed to make the high estimates predicted, indicating that the credit crunch was impacting the top-end art market.

Other notable items that were sold at Bonhams sale included a piece by former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney, whose design on a surfboard went for £960.

Banksy's distinctive cartoon-style spray can art is found all over the streets of London, Bristol and several other British cities.

His works regularly sell for hundreds of thousands of pounds at auction and his celebrity fans include Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Jude Law.

But despite his massive popularity he has zealously guarded his anonymity, fuelling rumours and speculation about his true identity.

The artist has regularly courted controversy with a series of daring projects.

In 2005 he targeted a security wall in Israel, creating nine stencil sprays on the Palestinian side of the West Bank barrier.

The British Museum fell prey to one of Banksy's most famous art pranks when he placed a hoax exhibit – entitled Early Man Goes to Market – on the wall, where it went unnoticed by staff for hours.