French impressionist Édouard Manet’s self-portrait was sold for a record price of more than £22 million at an auction in London on Tuesday.
The painting, which was bought for £22,441,250 by an anonymous bidder at Sotheby’s auction, has been described as one of the very greatest self-portraits in the entire canon of art history.
Painted circa 1878-79, Self-Portrait with a Palette (Portrait de Manet par lui-même, en buste (Manet à la palette)) is in fact one of just two self-portraits by the artist, and the only one in private hands, the other being in the Bridgestone Museum of Art in Tokyo.
The painting, which had been estimated to sell for £20-£30 million, shows a bearded Manet wearing a bowler hat with a paint brush and a palette in hands. Manet is considered as the father of Impressionism and helped move art from realism to more modern impressionist style.
The previous highest price for a Manet painting was £16 million at an auction in New York in 1989.
The painting was auctioned at the Impressionist & Modern Art sale in London on Tuesday evening and the sale realised 112 million and the pre-sale estimate was £101 million to £148 million. London this week is hosting a number of auctions of Impressionist and modern art works with sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams. The other highlights of the sale were paintings by Henri Matisse, André Derain and Chaïm Soutine, which have never appeared at auction before this.