Picasso sells for $104m shattering art record

PICASSO’S 1905 painting Boy with a Pipe has been sold to an unknown buyer for a record-shattering $104 million at Sotheby’s of New York.

It destroyed the previous record set by Vincent van Gogh's 1890 Portrait of Doctor Gachet, which was sold to a Japanese billionaire for $82.5 million in 1990 at Christie's. That price included the auction house's premium. The total includes the auction price of $93 million plus the auction house's commission of about $11 million.

"This is the finest work in private hands that was going to be available for sale," said David Norman, Sotheby's senior vice-president.

A 24-year-old Picasso painted Boy with a Pipe soon after settling in Montmartre, France. It depicts a young Parisian boy holding a pipe in his left hand and wearing a garland of flowers. John Hay and Betsey Whitney bought the painting in 1950 for $30,000.

Sotheby's called the work, which had a presale estimate of $70m, "one of the most beautiful of the artist's Rose Period paintings and one of the most important early works by Pablo Picasso ever to appear on the market."

The previous highest-selling Picasso piece was Woman with Crossed Arms, a Blue Period painting done in 1901 and 1902, which sold for more than $55m in November, 2000, at Christie's. It was the fifth-highest auction price paid for a work of art.

Boy with a Pipe was part of a collection of major works by Picasso, Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas and others that headlined an auction of 34 paintings from a charitable foundation created by philanthropist Betsey Whitney, Sotheby's said.

Also on the auction block was Courses au Bois de Boulogne by Manet. Painted in 1872, it depicts a day at the horse races and features a top-hatted figure in the lower-right corner thought to be Manet's fellow racing enthusiast Degas. It sold for $26.3m.

The collection, which had a presale estimate of more than $140 million, netted $190 million. The proceeds will go to the Greentree Foundation created in 1982 by Betsey Whitney following the death of her husband.

John Hay Whitney was editor in chief and publisher of The New York Herald Tribune from 1961 to 1966 and chairman of the International Herald Tribune from 1966 until his death.

Betsey Whitney died in 1998.