Beret dear..£50m Picasso

Bidders’ battles as masterpiece sets new UK record at auction

A PICASSO masterpiece has sold for a UK record of almost £50million.

Femme au Beret et a la Robe Quadrillee has been in the same private collection since the Spanish artist’s death in 1973.

Four international bidders battled for the piece. It went for £49.8million.

Harry Smith, of art acquistion firm Gurrs John, who won the auction for a client, said: “The art market has a fairly regular supply of Picassos, but it’s rare to see a painting as special and as fresh to the market as this one.”

The 22in oil painting depicts Picasso’s muse

Pablo Picasso THIS is one of the greatest portraits by Picasso to appear on the market in recent years.

This depiction of Marie-Therese from the 1930s, painted the same year as Weeping Woman, reveals his mastery of the modern portrait.

Of all of the artist’s styles and decades, this is the one that most and mistress, Marie-Therese Walter. The Spanish artist painted it in 1937.

The auction, at Sotheby’s in London, was the first time Femme au Beret had been available to buy publicly.

Helena Newman, of Sotheby’s, said it was a “thrill” to see it “achieve a new benchmark”.

The previous sterling record holder was Peter Paul Rubens’s The Massacre of the Innocents, fetching £49.5million in 2002.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi has the world record, selling for £335million in New York

last year. epitomises Picasso’s legacy as a portraitist of women, with this particular painting encompassing all the key elements for which he’s celebrated.