Picasso nude portrait fetches over 300 mln

A blue period Picasso with a double-sided erotic portrait, 'La Gommeuse' fetches more than $300 million at Sotheby's auction of Impressionist and modern art, setting a new record Sotheby's set a new record on Nov. 5 for a blue period Picasso with a double-sided erotic portrait, at a $300 million-plus auction of Impressionist and modern art that helped dim the memory of a disappointing result just one night earlier. 

Making steady if unspectacular prices, just over three-quarters of the 47 works on offer found buyers, with the $306.7 million total including commission comfortably beating the $275 million low pre-sale estimate. Sotheby's had tagged the high estimate at about $370 million. 

Picasso's "La Gommeuse" blue period portrait achieved the top price, fetching $67.5 million and meeting its $60 million expectation. Estimates do not include commission of just over 12 percent. 

The sale marked a recovery of sorts from the auction house's widely touted sale of the collection of its one-time owner and chairman Alfred Taubman, who was famously convicted and briefly imprisoned in 2002 after a price-fixing scandal that also engulfed archrival Christie's.  That auction made $377 million, barely making its low estimate. 

Officials seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, with Simon Shaw, Sotheby's co-head of Impressionist and modern art worldwide, lauding what he called "a small sale that packed a real punch" and praising "a very strong result for any owner sale in the category." 

The auction house noted that its $1.67 billion Impressionist and modern total for the year so far was already the highest in its 271-year history. 

Other highlights included Van Gogh's atmospheric landscape, "Paysage sous un ciel...