The 10 most expensive paintings sold at auction

If you have been in an art auction house this year, you could be forgiven for thinking there was no credit crunch. After Francis Bacon’s Triptych and Claude Monet’s Le bassin aux nymphéas both sold for record amounts this year, it seems art-lovers are still willing to pay enormous sums for their collections.

Here are the 10 works of art that have fetched the most money at auction. 

1. Pablo Picasso, Garçon à la Pipe, 1905
Went for: £51,845,245
Sold at: Sotheby’s New York, May 2004
Why? Picasso painted this when he was just 24. It depicts a young Parisian working boy crowned with a garland of roses, holding a pipe in his left hand. Charles Moffet at Sotheby's said: "It has a haunting ambiguity that has ensured its status as one of Picasso's most celebrated images of adolescent beauty.”

2. Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar au chat, 1941
Went for: £46,028,050
Sold at: Sotheby’s New York, May 2006
Why? Picasso painted his "private muse" many times during their nine-year affair, which began in 1936. Dora Maar au Chat was completed in 1941, a few years before the couple separated, and was described by Sotheby's as being among the most spectacular of all Picasso's portraits of Maar.

3. Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II, 1912
Went for: £41,315,788
Sold at: Christie’s New York, November 2006
Why? The Nazis confiscated this painting in 1938 when Bloch-Bauer’s husband was forced to flee Austria. In his will, he left the painting to his niece, Maria Altmann. But Ms Altmann faced a protracted legal battle to recover the painting, which she finally won in 2006.
Now it hangs in Ronald Lauder’s Neue Galerie in New York – a collection that aims to recover Jewish-owned art, mostly from Germany and Austria, that had been confiscated or looted by the Nazi government.

4. Francis Bacon, Triptych, 1976
Went for: £39,627,399
Sold at: Sotheby’s New York, May 2008
Why? Bacon, who died in 1992 at 82, is considered one of Britain's most important 20th century artists. This three-panelled painting depicts the legend of Prometheus, who is bound to a rock by Zeus and has his liver devoured by an eagle. Bacon also added elements from Aeschylus’ trilogy The Orestia.

5. Vincent van Gogh, Portrait du Dr. Gachet, 1890
Went for : £44,378,696
Sold at : Christie’s New York, May 1990
Why? The painting depicts van Gogh’s doctor, who looked after van Gogh in the painter’s final months. The foxglove featured in the painting was used to treat certain heart complaints.

6. Claude Monet, Le bassin aux nymphéas, 1919
Went for : £40,921,250
Sold at : Christie’s London, June 2008
Why? This painting of Monet's beloved water lilies formed part of his final painting campaign and was signed, dated and sold by the artist soon after its execution.

7. Pierre Auguste Renoir, Au Moulin de la Galette, 1876
Went for: £42,011,832
Sold at: Sotheby’s New York, May 1990
Why? The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where Renoir lived.

8. Peter Paul Rubens, The Massacre of the Innocents, 1609-11
Went for: £45,000,000
Sold at: Sotheby’s London
Why? The painting depicts an episode of the biblical Massacre of the Innocents as related in the Gospel of Matthew. The painting has been loaned to the National Gallery, London, where it hangs today.

9. Mark Rothko, White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), 1950
Went for: £32,828,282
Sold at: Sotheby’s New York, May 2007
Why? Rothko, who committed suicide in 1970, once said: "I am not an abstract painter. I am not interested in the relationship between form and color. The only thing I care about is the expression of man's basic emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, destiny."
According to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, this painting “suggests in numerous variations of colour and tone an astonishing range of atmospheres and moods.”

10. Andy Warhol, Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I), 1963
Went for: £32,323,232
Sold at: Christie’s New York, May 2007
Why? Part of Warhol’s Death and Disaster series, the painting is based on a photograph that appeared in Newsweek Magazine in 1963 of a police car chase in Seattle. The chase ended when the fleeing car crashed into a telephone pole.
The horror of the crash, in which the driver’s body is impaled on a post, occurs on an ordinary suburban street, with one passer-by not even noticing.

By Lauren Thompson

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Comments

[Jon Doe]

Filthy pigs for spending a few million on paintings? How about the West's budget for military research and production? Appreciate art or bomb a hungry nation...

[Paul]

Francis Bacon is an IRISH artist, he was based in Britain, but was born in Ireland, and showed his disdain for British art circle by willing his studio to an Irish art gallery. Also poster Helene, this Blog also glamourises having your liver devoured by an eagle, shame on them for that too?????

[Helene]

This blog glamorise smoking by the boy with pipe. Shame on the times money central - this is 2008!!!

[Luke T]

"Filthy pigs"? Bit strong, Jane. Don't be a hater.

[jane smithie]

well, the people who bought those paintings are filthy pigs. to spend that kind of money on a painting, while people go hungry, is sickening.