The story ended in Christie's New York when David Hockney's Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold for $90,312,500 (£70,227,449), a world record price for a living artist.
The painting represented the top lot in postwar and contemporary art evening sales, which totaled $357.622.500, and was 85 percent sold per lot and 93 percent by value. The figure pushes the combined total for sales for the season in New York to $1.011.587.875, with final sales coming this Friday.
The 1972 masterpiece combines two of the artist's most celebrated motifs – the swimming pool and the double portrait – and appeared on the cover of David Hockney's catalogue, which opened at the Tate Britain in February 2017 before visiting the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
Inspired by the fortuitous juxtaposition of two photographs in his studio, Hockney gave up his first attempt at painting in 1971, before returning to the idea in April of the following year. With an exhibition at the André Emmerich Gallery in New York opening just four weeks later, the English painter worked 18-hour days for two weeks, finishing overnight before shippers arrived to transport the painting to the United States.
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