LONDON, Feb 6: Famous artist Pablo Picasso’s painting of his “golden muse” has sold for more than 28.5 million pounds at an auction here.
The impressionist’s 1932 work ‘Woman Sitting Near a Window’ of his companion Marie-Therese Walter was the first of a series of sales held in London.
The amount realised for the 1932 Picasso painting was at the lower end of pre-sale estimates of 25 million to 35 million pounds, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported.
“We are delighted that this stunning and monumental portrait, which is part of the defining series that introduced his “golden muse” to the public eye, fetched such a strong price,” Helena Newman, from Sotheby’s, said.
“This particular portrait is a striking and notably modern-looking work from one of the artist’s most celebrated periods,” said Newman.
Austrian artist Egon Schiele’s 1914 art work, Lovers (Self Portrait With Wally) fetched 7.9 million pounds, an auction record for the artist for a work on paper.
The combined tally for Schiele works, sold by the museum to help settle a long-running restitution case involving art deemed to have been stolen by the Nazis in the 1930s, was 14 million pounds, the report said.
Interestingly, Max Beckmann’s Before the Ball – Two Women With a Cat went unsold despite pre-sale estimates of 5 million to 8 million pounds.
Overall the auction brought in around 121 million pounds in sales, within the expectations of 103 million pounds to 149 million pounds. Sotheby’s said it was their second highest total from an equivalent sale in London.
“Bidders, both new to the market as well as seasoned buyers, reacted with great enthusiasm, in particular to the selection of impressionist works that were considered to be the strongest offering in many years,” Helena Newman, chair of Sotheby’s impressionist and modern art in Europe said. (PTI)
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