A painting by Irish artist Sir John Lavery has sold for over €1 million at a Sotheby’s art auction in New York. An anonymous buyer paid $1.3 million (€1.03 million) yesterday for The Green Sofa, an oil-on-canvas measuring 25 by 36 inches.
The painting was sold by the estate of the late Katherine W Mellon – an American art collector who died earlier this year. She acquired it for an unknown sum in 1985.
Sotheby’s said the price had comfortably exceeded the highest estimate of $1 million.
Polly Sartori, a spokeswoman for the international auctioneering company, said the painting had been bought by an “American private collector” for $1,314,500.
The price is the second-highest paid for a Lavery painting and only the second of his works to sell for more than a million euro.
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