Workers put on display the oil painting "Slave and Lion" by Chinese artist Xu Beihong during a Christie's auction in Hong Kong November 26, 2006. The painting has smashed the record for a Chinese oil painting, selling for HK$53.9 million ($6.9 million). [Reuters]

"Slave and Lion" by Xu Beihong attracted furious bidding by buyers from around the world at the Christie's autumn auction in Hong Kong. The auction house declined to provide information about the buyer.

The previous record price of 30 million yuan (US$3.82 million) was also set by another of Xu's oil paintings, "Silly Old Man Moves a Mountain," sold in Beijing five months ago.

The latest record-breaking artwork demonstrated Xu's technique of combining a Western sense of form and Chinese line of drawing.

It was one of the very few works Xu created during his stay in Berlin in the early 1920s, Christie's said.

"Slave and Lion" depicts a story of a slave and a lion. The slave, Androcles, who helps a lion with a thorn in its paw, later runs into the same lion in a cruel human-animal battle game staged in a Rome theatre. The emperor is moved by the reunion, and frees the slave.

The auction yesterday included about 2,500 classical and modern paintings, luxury watches, jewellery and ceramics, predominantly from the region.