Price of a Picasso

Back home in Barcelona after his first unsuccessful foray on Paris, Pablo Picasso in 1902 painted a somber, Blue Period portrait of a woman, barefoot, with child in arms and holding a single bright red flower. At Sotheby's auction house last week, Picasso's down-and-out souvenir, Mother and Child by the Sea, brought the highest price ever paid for a work by a living artist: $532,000, more than double the previous record, also held by Picasso, whose Death of Harlequin sold in 1962 for $224,000.

It was a day that set records around the clock, and with each record came a mystery. Rumored seller of the Picasso: a member of the Greek Embiricos ship-owning clan. Top bidder: a Manhattan dealer named David Mann, who dashed off with his prize without even waiting to have it wrapped. New owners: still unknown at week's end. All Mann, who was pledged to secrecy, would say was that "they are a young American couple, relatively new to the art-collecting scene. I think the wife had known this painting for a long time. It was a dream of hers to own it, and we pulled it off!"

Among other new highs at Sotheby's: a Cezanne watercolor still life of a milk jug and apples, which brought $406,000--the highest price ever paid for any watercolor at auction. Since the bidder was a Los Angeles dealer, people speculated that he had acted for Collector Norton Simon, who remained mum. A Degas bronze horse pranced off for a record price of $51,800. A Chagall picture (circa 1917) brought $84,000, a new record for him. All in all, Sotheby's knocked down for $2,962,960, 87 works of art, a record for any one-day sale of impressionists and modern masters.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.