Picasso's Golden Muse smashes auction estimate to sell for £49.8m

Golden Muse: Portrait of Picasso's mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter becomes the most expensive painting ever auctioned in Europe
Evening Standard / eyevine/Alex Lentati
Robert Dex @RobDexES1 March 2018

London's art market hit new heights as a rarely seen Picasso portrait became the most expensive painting ever auctioned in Europe.

The 1937 painting of the artist’s mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter fetched £49.8 million at Sotheby’s, topping a 16-year record since the same auction house sold Rubens’ The Massacre of the Innocents for £49.5 million.

It is the second-highest auction price for any work of art ever sold in Europe, behind Alberto Giacometti’s Walking Man sculpture, which went for £65 million in 2010.

The painting of the Spanish artist’s “golden muse” was completed in the same year as his anti-war masterpiece Guernica and stayed in Picasso’s own collection until his death in 1973, when it was bought by a private collector.

Four bidders battled for the right to buy when the 22-inch work, titled Femme au beret et à la robe quadrillée, went on sale for the first time last night.

The bidding war was won by art adviser Gurr Johns on behalf of an unnamed client.

Gurr Johns also spent a further £22.8 million on two other Picassos, including £16.5 million on Le Matador painted in the final years of his life.

Helena Newman, global co-head of Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern art department, said: “Having been part of the incredible moment when Alberto Giacometti’s Walking Man achieved its unprecedented price for any sculpture, it was a particular thrill to see Picasso’s portrait of his golden muse Marie-Therésè Walter achieve a new benchmark in the same saleroom for any painting auctioned in Europe.”

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The sale as a whole totalled £136 million with another work by Giacometti, a one-off bronze chandelier, fetching £7.6 million.

It is less than a year since the rediscovered Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece, Salvator Mundi, became the most expensive artwork ever sold, bought by a Saudi prince for £340 million to go on display in the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Spiralling fine art prices in recent months have led experts at the Artprice index to predict a buyer will soon smash the $1 billion threshold as competition between major international museums pushes offers into the stratosphere.

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