Picasso masterpiece kicks off auction season forecast to sell $2.5bn in art

Le Bassin aux Nympheas, by the French painter
Claude Monet, painted between 1917 and 1919.
Photograph: Sotheby’s/EPA

A Pablo Picasso masterpiece of his “golden muse” is predicted to trigger a $120m (£100m)-plus bidding war between billionaire art collectors on Wednesday night, in the first big lot of an autumn auction season that is expected to sell more than $2.5bn (£2bn) of art.

The portrait Femme à la Montre (Woman with Watch) will be sold at auction by Sotheby’s in New York at 6pm local time, with a sales estimate in excess of $120m (£98m).

The 1932 painting of Picasso’s secret lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter, was created during the artist’s explosive “year of wonders” as he prepared for his first large-scale retrospective in Paris at the age of 50 and is highly sought after by collectors.

Full story at Yahoo News.

By Rupert Neate Wealth correspondent.