Pablo Picasso - Femme assise, robe bleue. Seated Woman in Blue Dress 1939
Femme assise, robe bleue. Seated Woman in Blue Dress 1939 73x60cm oil on canvas
Sold for: USD 45.0 million
Auction house: Christie's, New York
Sale date: 15 May 2017
Seller: Anonymous owner
Buyer: Anonymous buyer
Pablo Picasso's portrait of Dora Maar has been sold at a Christie's auction in New York for $45 million (£35m).
Femme Assise, Robe Bleu (Seated Woman in Blue Dress), which features one the Spanish artist's many lovers, was seized by the Nazis during World War Two. However, French Resistance fighters intercepted it as the Germans were making their way from Paris to Moravia.
The painting, which had passed through the hands of eminent art dealer and collector Ernst Beyeler in the Sixties, had been sold in 2011 to the Geneva-based collector Dimitri Mavromatis for £18 million.