Back in 2004, a Picasso became the first artwork ever to sell at auction for more than $100 million, and the man born in Málaga on October 25, 1881, has been rewriting the record books ever since. Mental Floss has ranked the most expensive paintings ever sold across every artist; this list sticks to Picasso and to public auctions where the houses publish the final number.
These prices include the buyer’s premium and are in dollars on the day of the sale, and private deals, like the reported $155 million hedge fund manager Steve Cohen paid for Le Rêve in 2013, stay off the board. With that, one name keeps coming up: Marie-Thérèse Walter, the young woman Picasso painted obsessively in the early 1930s, who sits for five of the ten, four of which date from 1932.
Here are the 10 most expensive Picasso paintings ever sold.
- Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’) (1955)
- Femme à la montre (1932)
- Fillette à la corbeille fleurie (1905)
- Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (1932)
- Garçon à la pipe (1905)
- Femme assise près d’une fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse) (1932)
- Dora Maar au chat (1941)
- Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter) (1937)
- Femme nue couchée (1932)
- La Gommeuse (1901)
Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’) (1955)
The top spot belongs to the last of 15 variations Picasso painted after Eugène Delacroix’s Women of Algiers. It sold at Christie’s in New York on May 11, 2015, for $179,365,000, and when the bidding reached $152 million, auctioneer Jussi Pylkkänen told the room, “We’re in new territory.” The collector Victor Ganz had offered to buy the whole series in 1956 for $212,500, and the painting last sold in 1997 for $31.9 million. Christie’s didn’t name the buyer, though it was reportedly Qatar’s former prime minister, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani. Mental Floss has more on the painting itself.
Femme à la montre (1932)
Marie-Thérèse makes her first appearance on the list in this portrait, which sold at Sotheby’s in New York on November 8, 2023, for $139.4 million, the most valuable artwork sold at auction that year. It came from the collection of Emily Fisher Landau, who bought it from Pace Gallery in 1968 and kept it for 55 years; she died in March 2023 at the age of 102. Bidding opened at $95 million, and three bidders on the phone fought over it.
Fillette à la corbeille fleurie (1905)
This Rose Period painting of a young girl holding a basket of flowers sold at Christie’s in New York on May 8, 2018, for $115 million, as part of the auction of Peggy and David Rockefeller’s collection. Its first owners were Leo and Gertrude Stein, who bought it the year Picasso painted it. When Stein’s estate sold it in 1968, it went to a Museum of Modern Art syndicate that included Rockefeller.
Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (1932)
Christie’s billed it as the “lost” 1932 Picasso, which wasn’t much of an exaggeration: the painting had been shown in public exactly once, in 1961. Sidney Brody and his wife bought it from Picasso’s dealer, Paul Rosenberg, in 1950 for $17,000, and on May 4, 2010, it sold at Christie’s in New York for $106,482,500. Marie-Thérèse is the model.
Garçon à la pipe (1905)
The painting that broke the $100 million barrier is the second Rose Period canvas on the list. It sold at Sotheby’s in New York on May 5, 2004, for $104,168,000, from the Whitney family’s collection, which had paid about $30,000 for it in 1950. Adjusted for inflation, that price comes to about $185 million today, enough to move it to second place. The buyer was never announced, but was believed to be Guido Barilla, of the pasta company.
Femme assise près d’une fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse) (1932)
This one more than doubled in price in less than a decade: it had sold in London eight years earlier for £28.6 million, about $45 million. At Christie’s in New York on May 13, 2021, bidding ran for 19 minutes before it went to an online bidder in California for $103.4 million, against an estimate of around $55 million.
Dora Maar au chat (1941)
The photographer Dora Maar, who followed Marie-Thérèse as Picasso’s muse, gets her turn here. The portrait sold at Sotheby’s in New York on May 3, 2006, for $95,216,000, which at the time made it the second most expensive painting ever sold at auction. The winning bidder in the room was later reported to be buying for the Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, who went on to become his country’s prime minister.
Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter) (1937)
Picasso painted this portrait in the months after Guernica, and it stayed out of the auction room until Sotheby’s sold it in London in February 2018 for £49.8 million, or $69.2 million. That set the record for any painting sold at auction in Europe, and three bidders competed for it.
Femme nue couchée (1932)
Marie-Thérèse appears one more time, painted as a kind of sea creature, inspired by her love of swimming. The painting had never been to auction before it sold at Sotheby’s in New York on May 17, 2022, for $67.5 million, the most paid for a Picasso that year. The seller was reportedly Cohen, who had bought it from Picasso’s heirs in 2008.
La Gommeuse (1901)
The only Blue Period painting on the list has a secret on the back: during conservation in 2000, a hidden caricature of Picasso’s friend Pere Mañach turned up on the reverse of the canvas. Bill Koch bought the painting for $3 million in 1984, and it sold at Sotheby’s in New York on November 5, 2015, for $67,450,000. It edged out Buste de femme (Femme à la résille), a 1938 portrait of Dora Maar that had sold six months earlier, the same night as Les Femmes d’Alger, for about $67.4 million.