£9.8m Picasso gives art market a shot in the arm

A victim of disgraced Wall Street financier Bernie Madoff sold his Picasso painting for nearly £10million at Christie's Impressionist and Modern Art auction in New York, helping to revive the ailing art market. 

Footwear tycoon and philanthropist Jerome Fisher, who lost an estimated $150 million in Madoff's Ponzi scheme, sold Picasso's 1968 painting Musketeer With Pipe, inspired by Alexandre Dumas's novel The Three Musketeers, for £9.8million, comfortably above its estimate of £8 million.

The picture fetched double what MrFisher paid for it in 2004. It was bought by a Belgian art dealer who refused to divulge the identity of his client.

Artist and film-maker Julian Schnabel sold his 1971 Picasso, Woman Wearing a Hat, for nearly £5.2 million to Cork Street gallery owner David Nahmad. A new record was set for the art deco Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka when her 1932 work Portrait of Madame M fetched £4.1 million.

The total value of art sold was £68million, surpassing the low pre-sale estimate of £52 million. New York-based art dealer Jean Zimmermann said: "This provides proof that the market is in robust shape. All around the auction room, there were people willing to still spend money on art."