When Pablo Picasso's masterpiece, Les Femmes d'Alger, sold for US$179 million ($243 million) in New York yesterday, it smashed the record for a painting sold at auction.
The bidding started at US$100 million and was all over in 11 and a half tense minutes with the painting going to an anonymous telephone bidder.
But it is still far from the most expensive painting of all time. It manages only fourth place. Others have changed hands for millions more in private sales. Here are the 10 most expensive paintings in history. (The prices shown are all adjusted for inflation.)
1 US$300m When Will You Marry by Paul Gauguin
Gauguin's Nafea faa ipoipo? (When will you Marry?) commanded huge prices.
Gauguin's 1892 picture of two Tahitian girls smashed the record for the world's most expensive single work of art, when Qatar bought the canvas from a Swiss collector for almost US$300 million in February. It was painted during Gauguin's first trip to Tahiti.
2 US$274m The Card Players by Paul Cezanne
Cezanne's The Card Players. Photo / AP
Qatar had previously held the record with this work, bought in 2011, one of dozens of major Western works its museums have snapped up in recent years. It featured two stony-faced card players, models selected by Cezanne from his family's estate outside Aix-en-Provence: the gardener and a farm hand.
3 US$186m No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red) by Mark Rothko
Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian billionaire, paid US$186 million, setting a record for a work by the American painter. However, it is now subject to a legal dispute with Rybolovlev accusing Yves Bouvier, an art dealer, of misleading him about the price.
4 US$179.3m Les Femmes d'Alger (Version O) by Pablo Picasso
Picasso created 15 variations of Les femmes d'Alger inspired by the French master Eugene Delacroix who in 1834 had painted The Women of Algiers in their Apartment. Version O marks the culmination of the series and has long been considered the most important Picasso in private hands.
5 US$165.4m No 5, 1948 by Jackson Pollock
Pollock's No 5, 1948.
A sale shrouded in secrecy and brokered by Sotheby's in 2006. David Martinez reportedly bought the 2.5m by 1.2m piece of fibreboard, covered in drips of brown and yellow paint from David Geffen. Martinez's law firm later issued a statement saying he did not own it.
6 US$162.4m Woman III by Willem de Kooning
Another painting sold by David Geffen in 2006, it was bought by Steven Cohen, a hedge fund billionaire. It was part of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art collection, which meant it disappeared from view after strict rules on images of women were introduced after the 1979 revolution.
7 US$158.5m Le Reve by Pablo Picasso
Another picture snapped up in 2013 by Steven Cohen. The deal had originally been agreed in 2006, but its owner Steve Wynn, the casino magnate, accidentally put his elbow through the canvas. The deal went through after it had been repaired.
8 US$158.4m Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt
Ronald Lauder, the cosmetics magnate, bought the gold-flecked portrait in 2006 for the Neue Galerie. At the time, it was a record paid for a painting. Its extraordinary story - seized by the Nazis during World War II and reclaimed by the rightful owner's niece only when she was in her 80s - is told in a recent film, Woman in Gold.
9 US$152m Portrait of Dr Gachet by Vincent van Gogh
Van Gogh's portrait of the medic who cared for him broke records when it was sold in 1990. The portrait was bought by a Tokyo art dealer on behalf of Japanese industrialist Ryoei Saito. However, when Saito died in debt, the painting disappeared and its whereabouts remain unknown.
10 US$145m Three studies of Lucian Freud by Francis Bacon
Held the auction record after selling at Christie's New York in 2013. Surpassed its estimate of US$85 million as frantic bidding between seven potential buyers pushed up the price for the 1.8m triptych, which was painted in 1969, and shows Bacon's friend Lucian Freud, the British painter.
