NEW YORK, Nov 8 (Portal) – Pablo Picasso’s 1932 painting “Femme à la montre” sold for more than $139 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on Wednesday, making it the most valuable work of art, which was sold at auction worldwide this year.
The work is a standout of New York City’s fall art auction season and is considered by many to be a bellwether for the art market. It went under the hammer as part of an estimated $400 million sale of the late philanthropist Emily Fisher Landau’s collection.
The nine-figure price made it the second most expensive Picasso painting sold at auction, behind “Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’),” which fetched $179.3 million including buyer’s premium at Christie’s in 2015.
“Femme à la montre,” which means “woman with a watch” in French, is a portrait of the artist’s lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter, sitting on a throne-like chair against a blue background. The titular wristwatch is a motif that can also be seen in works of art created by Picasso of his wife, the Russian-Ukrainian ballerina Olga Khokhlova.
Pablo Picasso’s 1932 painting “Femme a la Montre” will be auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York City, USA on November 8, 2023. Portal/Ben Kellerman Acquire License Rights
Walter was 17 when she met 45-year-old Picasso in Paris, and the two later began a secret relationship while he was still married to Khokhlova. Walter became his subject for a number of artworks, including the 1932 painting “Femme nue couchée,” which sold at auction in 2022 for $67.5 million.
Picasso painted “Femme à la montre” during a pivotal year in his career. By 1932, aged 50, he had already achieved great fame but increased his ambitions to silence critics who questioned “whether he was an artist of the past or the future”, according to the Tate Modern Museum.
According to Sotheby’s, Fisher Landau bought the painting at New York’s Pace Gallery in 1968 and kept it above the mantel in her Manhattan apartment.
An anonymous buyer beat out two other bidders for the painting.
Reporting by Ben Kellerman; Editing by Rod Nickel
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