$30m for paintings in bumper art sale

Two artworks have each sold for more than $30 million at the biggest Sotheby's auction of Impressionist and modern art in 16 years.

The sale in New York made a total of $238 million (£125 million), the auction house said.

The highlight of the sale was Cezanne's spectacular still-life Fruit And Ginger Jarwhich sold for $36.97 million (£19.4 million).

The seminal 1895 work, which heralded the birth of Modernism, sold above the high estimate of $35 million and considerably more than the $18.2 million achieved when it was last offered at auction in 2000.

Amedeo Modigliani's 1918 painting The Concierge's Son, one of the Italian artist's best known portraits of a child, sold for $31,096,000 (£16.3 million).

The amount stands just short of the record for the artist, who was recently the subject of a blockbuster Royal Academy show.

British sculptor Lynn Chadwick was among the artists whose auction record was broken last night. Her Pair of Walking Figures: Jubilee, 1977, and Seated Couple, 1984, from The Vanthournout Collection, sold for $1.47 million (£772,000) and $1.86 million (£978,000) respectively.

Other sales include Picasso's Le Fumeur, a 1953 work considered by many to be a veiled self-portrait, which sold for $10.6 million (£5.6 million).

Sotheby's said it had been its most lucrative Impressionist and modern art sale since 1990.

"We're absolutely thrilled," said David Norman, the auction house's chairman of Impressionist and modern art.

The sale signaled a "very varied buying pool" with a lot of international interest, he said, adding, "There's really no segment of the market that's out of fashion."

But some high-profile paintings still failed to sell. Among the most noteworthy casualties were Monet's The Beach At Trouville and Picasso's The Rescue.

Tonight sees a Christie's auction sale in New York at which Andrew Lloyd Webber's Picasso painting will be sold for an estimated £30 million.