A 1932 painting by Pablo Picasso, Femme à la montre, sold for $139.3 million on Wednesday night at Sotheby’s in New York.
In a stroke, it became the second-most expensive piece by the artist to sell at auction after Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’), which sold for $179 million at Christie’s New York in 2015.
Estimated “in excess” of $120 million, the work depicts Picasso’s lover Marie-Thérèse Walter wearing a wrist watch. It was consigned by the estate of Emily Fisher Landau, whose fortune was derived predominantly from real estate development. Fisher Landau, who died earlier this year, assembled a massive collection of blue-chip art; the single owner evening and day sales of her work at Sotheby’s carried a presale estimate in excess of $400 million.
Auctioneer Oliver Barker began bidding on the Picasso at $95 million, climbing quickly to $110 million in $5 million increments. After three separate phone bidders slowly drove it up over about four minutes, it hammered at $121 million–auction house fees brought the tally to its final price.
It solidly beat out the artist’s previous record for second place, the 1905 portrait of a young girl, Fillette à la corbeille fleurie, which was sold in 2018 for $115 million as part of the David Rockefeller estate sale at Christie’s.
Although Femme à la montre s didn’t set a new auction record for the artist, the work is likely to be the most expensive artwork to sell in this year’s November auctions in New York. Some $2.5 billion worth of art will hit the auction blocks over the next week and a half.
