Modigliani nude sells for record £43 million
A Modigliani nude has fetched £43million in what Sotheby's claimed was its best New York sale in two years.
The auction house's sale of Impressionist and Modern Art generated a total of £141.8million with four artworks selling for more than £9 million last night.
Five bidders, believed to be from Russia and Asia, competed to buy Modigliani's Nude Seated On A Divan with the undisclosed telephone buyer purchasing the painting for £43million smashing its pre-sale estimate of £25million.
The painting forms part of Modigliani's series of nudes from 1917. The sale doubled the previous record for a painting by the Italian.
Simon Shaw, Sotheby's senior vice president and head of Impressionist & Modern Art, said: "It's an extraordinary masterpiece, the likes of which we haven't seen at auction for many years."
In 1999 the same painting sold at Sotheby's to Turkish banker Halit Cingillioglu for £10.4 million.
Another Modigliani, Jeanne Hébuterne (au chapeau), sold for £12 million above its estimate of £7.5 million. Other top lots to go under the hammer included a Monet water-lily painting Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas which fetched £15.4 million and Matisse's Dancer In An Armchair With a Chequered Floor which went for £13 million. The sale also included works by Picasso, Henry Moore and Marc Chagall.
