A Picasso painting was sold for more than $139 million (Rs 1159.26 crore) at an auction. This is the second-highest price ever paid for a Picasso painting. The painting, called "Femme a la montre," was estimated to sell for $120 million, but it went for even more. It was part of a collection of art that belonged to Emily Fisher Landau.
In 2015, a different Picasso painting, called "Les femmes d'Alger," sold for over $179 million.
The work is a standout of New York City's fall art auction season, seen by many as a bellwether for the art market. It went under the hammer as part of an estimated $400 million sale of the collection of the late philanthropist Emily Fisher Landau.
According to Sotheby's, the Pablo Picasso's masterpiece was made in 1932.
"Femme a la montre," which translates from French to "Woman with a Watch," is a portrait of the artist's lover Marie-Therese Walter seated in a throne-like chair against a blue background. The titular wristwatch is a motif also seen in artwork Picasso made of his wife, Russian-Ukrainian ballerina Olga Khokhlova.
According to the news agency Reuters, Ms Walter was 17 years old when she met the 45-year-old Picasso in Paris, and the two later entered into a secret relationship while he was still married to Khokhlova. Walter became the subject of a number of artworks, including the 1932 painting "Femme nue couchee," which sold for $67.5 million at auction in 2022.
Picasso painted "Femme a la montre" during a pivotal year in his career. At 50 years old, he had already achieved widespread fame by 1932 but ramped up his ambitions to silence critics who questioned "whether he was an artist of the past rather than the future," according to the Tate Modern museum.
