Picasso work sells for over $95M

A portrait of Pablo Picasso's mistress Dora Maar has sold for the second-highest price ever paid for a painting at auction.

Dora Maar au chat, which depicts the woman who inspired the Cubist master in the late 1930s and early 1940s, sold for $95.2 million US Wednesday night at Sotheby's auction house in New York.

The colourful, large-scale work ofMaar, seated, with a cat perched on the back of the chair, was expected to draw more than $40 million US but the final priceastonished even auction officials.

"The energy in the room was incredible," Sotheby's auctioneer Tobias Meyer told Reuters.

"There's just a very clear, strong demand for the kind of intense painting with an emotional pull that the Picasso represents."

The sale is second only to another Picasso paintingGaron la pipe, which Sotheby's sold for $104.2 million US two years ago.

The evening also included the sale of two major paintings owned by former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, who was convicted last year of grand larceny and other charges.

Claude Monet's Prs Monte Carlo and Auguste Renoir's Fleurs et Fruits drew $5.1 million US and $2.8 million US, respectively, from anonymous buyers.

The works were sold by court order to pay for fines, restitution and other fees, according to prosecutors.

Another highlight of the auction included a new record set for the work of Henri Matisse. His Nu couch de dos, a voluptuous oil painting of a nude odalisquereclining on a bed, sold for slightly less than $18.5 million US.