Pablo Picasso Maternity (Mother and Child), 1905 Oil on canvas
Private Collection
Earlier this evening, as part of the first leg of sales from the estate of Peggy and David Rockefeller at Christie’s, that painting, dating to 1905 and standing a full five feet tall, sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for $115.1 million, against a presale estimate in the region of $100 million, making it the second most expensive Picasso to sell at auction, behind Les femmes d’Alger (version ‘O’) from 1955, which sold for $179.3 million at Christie’s in May 2015.