EST:£13.7M SOLD:£26M

CREATED in 1888, Paul Gauguin’s La Vague — The Wave — depicts a beach scene in Brittany.

The unnatural red colour of the sand in the work is an early example of the French artist’s experimentation with colour, for which he became renowned.

Two young women are fleeing the incoming wave as it crashes over rocks, which is thought to be a sexual innuendo.

Rockefeller, who bought the painting in 1966, recalled: ‘Peggy was very much taken with it.’

It was hung in the library of the couple’s Manhattan townhouse.