Pablo Picasso’s 1932 painting “Femme à la montre” sold for more than $139 million on Wednesday, Nov. 8, at a Sotheby’s New York auction, making it the most valuable work of art sold globally at an auction this year.

The work is a standout of New York City’s fall art auction season.

It was auctioned as part of an estimated $400 million sale of the collection of late philanthropist Emily Fisher Landau.

The nine-digit price made it the second most-expensive Picasso painting to sell at auction, behind “Les femmes d'Alger (Version 'O'),” which fetched $179.3 million, including a buyer’s premium, at Christie’s in 2015.

“Femme à la montre,” which translates from French to “Woman with a Watch,” is a portrait of the artist’s lover Marie-Thérèse Walter seated in a throne-like chair against a blue background. The titular wristwatch is a motif also seen in artwork Picasso made of his wife, Russian-Ukrainian ballerina Olga Khokhlova.

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

Walter became his subject for a number of artworks, including the 1932 painting "Femme nue couchée," which sold for $67.5 million at auction in 2022.

Fisher Landau bought the “Femme à la montre” painting from New York’s Pace Gallery in 1968 and kept it above the mantle in her Manhattan apartment, according to Sotheby’s.

An anonymous buyer beat out two other bidders for the painting on Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023

My 9 year old Mozlem bride draws better than this rubbish.

FuckingMachine:
My 9 year old Mozlem bride draws better than this rubbish.

Calmed down no reason am, don't just see it as a mare portraits there's a secret behind all those Asian drawing and painting.
If only they can reveal what's inside all those sculpture's and art's, guy you will be silent.

Read and try to make research about Da Vinci's codes

SIXTEENTH:


Calmed down no reason am, don't just see it as a mare portraits there's a secret behind all those Asian drawing and painting.
If only they can reveal what's inside all those sculpture's and art's, guy you will be silent.

Read and try to make research about Da Vinci's codes

You are illiterate.

FuckingMachine:


You are illiterate.

It's was your illiteracy that's makes you see it as just a drawing and painting whom you think your daughter can just sketch it

SIXTEENTH:


It's was your illiteracy that's makes you see it as just a drawing and painting whom you think your daughter can just sketch it

tell him to tell his daughter to start drawing one so that they will be selling it for $1m nah

Henryfocoyo:
tell him to tell his daughter to start drawing one so that they will be selling it for $1m nah

Instead of him to calm down ask questions rather he just decided to excoriates my view to enlightened him based on ignorant

Is not about the drawing. There's a treasure behind the painting

FuckingMachine:
My 9 year old Mozlem bride draws better than this rubbish.