Pablo Picasso’s painting ‘Femme nue couchée’ (1932) made its auction debut at Sotheby’s in New York on Tuesday for $67.5 million. Sotheby’s had predicted that the Picasso painting, a surrealist depiction of his muse Marie-Thérèse Walter, would sell for more than $60 million. The price it now fetches is lower than other portraits of Marie-Thérèse, one of which fetched $103.4 million at Christie’s last year. “Femme nue couchée” (“Naked reclining woman”) shows Marie-Thérèse as a multi-limbed sea creature in profile with her head tilted back. Her love of swimming and grace in the water inspired the nod to the sea, as Picasso himself could not swim. Marie-Thérèse was 17 when she met the 45-year-old Picasso in Paris. They began a secret relationship, and their daughter Maya Widmaier-Picasso was born in 1935.
According to Sotheby’s, the seller acquired the work in 2008 from Picasso’s heirs, who had owned it for decades. Artnet magazine identified the seller as hedge fund billionaire and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen.
A 1908 oil painting by Claude Monet depicting a view of Venice, Italy, was also sold on Tuesday for $56.6 million.