Picasso's painting costs 139 million USD, the most expensive since the beginning of 2023

Pablo Picasso's painting Femme à la montre (1932) was sold for more than $139 million on November 8 at a Sotheby's auction in New York.

The painting "Femme a la Montre" is displayed at an auction at Sotheby's in New York City on November 8. Photo: The West Australian

At this price, the painting has become the most valuable artwork sold globally at an auction so far this year.

The work was a standout in New York City’s fall art auctions, widely considered a highlight of the art market. It was auctioned as part of the $400 million sale of the late philanthropist Emily Fisher Landau’s collection.

The price makes “Femme à la montre” the second most expensive Picasso painting ever sold at auction, after “Les femmes d'Alger,” which fetched $179.3 million, including buyer's premium, at a Christie's auction in 2015.

The work “Femme à la montre” measures 130 cm x 96.5 cm and is a portrait of Picasso's lover - artist Marie Thérèse Walter - sitting on a throne-like chair against a blue background.

The wristwatch is a motif that also appears in Picasso's artwork of his wife, Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova.

Walter was just 17 when she met the 45-year-old Picasso in Paris, and the two began a secret relationship while he was still married to Khokhlova.

Picasso's painting costs 139 million USD, the most expensive since the beginning of 2023

Artist Pablo Picasso and his lover Marie Thérèse Walter. Photo: Tricera Art

Walter became the subject of several works of art by the Spanish artist, including his 1932 painting “Femme nue couchée,” which sold for $67.5 million at auction in 2022.

Pablo Picasso died in 1973 at the age of 91 and Walter died in 1977.

According to the auction house, this portrait is one of the works created during the most prolific years of the Spanish artist's career, and was the subject of an entire exhibition organized by the Picasso Museum (Paris, France) and Tate Modern (London, England) in 2018.

"Picasso's Femme à la montre is a masterpiece in every way," said Julian Dawes, Sotheby's head of Impressionist & Modern Art in the Americas, in a statement announcing the sale. "Drawn in 1932, the work is filled with joy, expressed in the bold primary colors of the painting."

According to Sotheby's, Fisher Landau bought the painting from the Pace Gallery in New York in 1968 and kept it on a dresser in her Manhattan apartment.

An anonymous buyer beat out two other bidders to win this painting in the recent auction.

Picasso's painting costs 139 million USD, the most expensive since the beginning of 2023