Picasso's 'Woman with a Watch' fetches US$139m at auction: Sotheby's
Pablo Picasso's 1932 painting "Femme a la Montre" is displayed at an auction at Sotheby's, in New York City, US, on November 8, 2023.
One of Pablo Picasso's masterpieces, "Woman with a Watch," was sold at auction Wednesday night for US$139.3 million by Sotheby's in New York, the second-highest price ever achieved for the artist.
The 1932 painting depicts one of the Spanish artist's companions and muses, the French painter Marie-Therese Walter, and had been valued at over US$120 million before going on the block, according to Sotheby's.
"Femme a la montre" is part of Sotheby's special sale this week of the collection of New York arts patron Emily Fisher Landau, who died this year at the age of 102.
Julian Dawes, the house's head of impressionist and modern art, called the Picasso canvas — which hung in Landau's living room — "a masterpiece by every measure."
"Painted in 1932 — Picasso's 'annus mirabilis' — it is full of joyful, passionate abandon yet at the same time it is utterly considered and resolved," he said.
Walter was considered Picasso's "golden muse," and features in another of his works on the block on Thursday at Christie's: "Femme endormie," or "Sleeping Woman," estimated to sell for US$25-US$35 million.
She also featured in "Femme assise pres d'une fenetre (Marie-Therese)," which was sold in 2021 for US$103.4 million.
Walter met Picasso in Paris in 1927, when she was just 17 and the Spanish artist was still married to Russian-Ukrainian ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova. The couple had a daughter together who died last year.
Another Picasso from 1932 was sold for US$106 million in 2010.
The record sale of a Picasso was of "The Women of Algiers (Version O)," a 1955 oil painting sold for US$179.4 million.
When it was sold at Christie's New York in 2015, it was also the record for any work of art sold at auction.
It was dethroned in November 2017 by the sale of "Salvator Mundi" attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which went under the hammer for US$450 million and holds the record to this day.
Fifty years after his death in 1973 aged 91, Picasso remains one of the most influential artists of the modern world, and is often hailed as a dynamic and creative genius.
