Pablo Picasso’s 1932 painting “Femme à la montre” sold for more than $139 million at a Sotheby’s New York auction on Wednesday, Nov. 8, becoming the most valuable work of art sold globally at an auction this year.
The work is a highlight of the autumn art auction season in New York City.
It was auctioned off as part of the late philanthropist Emily Fisher Landau’s collection, which was valued at $400 million.
The nine-figure price made it the second most expensive Picasso painting to sell at auction, trailing only “Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’,” which fetched $179.3 million, including a buyer’s premium, in 2015.
“Femme à la montre,” which translates from French to “Woman with a Watch,” is a portrait of the artist’s lover Marie-Thérèse 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.
Walter was 17 when she met Picasso, 45, in Paris, and the two later had a secret relationship while he was still married to Khokhlova.
Walter became the subject of several of his works, including the 1932 painting “Femme nue couchée,” which sold at auction for $67.5 million in 2022.
According to Sotheby’s, Fisher Landau purchased the “Femme à la montre” painting from New York’s Pace Gallery in 1968 and kept it above the mantle in her Manhattan apartment.
On Wednesday, November 8, 2023, an anonymous buyer outbid two other bidders for the painting.
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