The Tuesday evening sale of Impressionist & Modern Art at Sotheby’s London totalled £103,280,000 (est. £81.8 – 98.95m). The 27-lot auction was led by Picasso’s Cubist masterpiece Femme assise which sold for £43.3m / $63.6m – setting a new record price for any Cubist work at auction. The work achieved the highest price for a painting sold in London in over five years, since the sale of Alberto Giacometti’s Walking Man I at Sotheby’s London in 2010 for £65m.

The greatest Cubist painting to come to the market in decades, Femme assise of 1909 came to the market having remained in a private collection since 1973 when it was acquired for £340,000.

The sale also saw a record for a portrait by Amedeo Modigliani, as Jeanne Hébuterne (au foulard) of 1919 fetched £38.5m / $56.6m / €50.2m – the second-highest price for a painting sold in London in over five years. One of the greatest portraits the artist painted of his most loyal muse, and the finest to come to the market in a decade, this work was last sold in 1986 for £1.94m.

Further Notable Prices Included:

- Record established for an impression of Edvard Munch’s iconic The Scream, which sold for £1.8m /$2.7m /€2.4m as the price soared above estimate of £800,000 - 1,200,000

- Paul Gauguin’s Nature morte aux pommes exceeded the high estimate of £2.2-2.8m selling for £3.4m / $5m / €4.4m

- Strong price for Peinture murale by Fernand Léger, which sold for £1.4m / $2.1m / €1.9m (est. £1 – 1.5m) - Alberto Giacometti, Portrait de Diego, appearing on the market for the first time and a work he kept in his possession until his death, reached £1.3m / $2m / €1.7m (est. £500,000 - 700,000)

- Marc Chagall’s Deux têtes à la fenêtre was hotly contested and fetched £593,000 / $872,066 / €772,560 (est. £250,000 - 350,000) - Wilfredo Lam’s Fruits tropicaux tonight sold for £1.1m / $1.7m / €1.5m (£650,000- 850,000)

- Joaquín Torres-Garcia’s Peinture Constructive sold for £989,000/$1.5m /€1.3m (est. £600,000 - 800,000)

Sale Overview:

- Almost two thirds of the works offered tonight had been off the market for over 30 years

- Participation from 29 countries (slightly higher than June 2015 sale)

- Sell-through rate: 88.9%

Two works sold from property of WDR: Max Beckmann’s Möwen im Sturm (Seagulls in the Storm) sold for £821,000 / $1.2m / €1.1m (est. £700,000-1,000,000) and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner‘s Alpweg (Bergweg) sold for £845,000 / $1.2m / €1.1m (est. £600,000 – 800,000).