Picasso portrait of mistress sells for $45m

NEW YORK - A Picasso portrait of his mistress Dora Maar, called Femme Assise, Robe Bleue (Seated Woman in Blue Dress), painted on the Spanish master's 58th birthday, sold for $45 million at Christie's art sale on Monday, kicking off a week of high-profile auctions expected to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars.

Christie's and Sotheby's - esteemed houses founded in 18th-century London - are chasing combined sales of at least $1.1 billion in offering hundreds of contemporary, modern and impressionist works for auction in New York.

The Picasso portrait was only the second most expensive lot of the Christie's auction. A bronze of a woman's head, La Muse Endormie (The Sleeping Muse), sold for $57.37 million, a new auction record for Romanian-born sculptor Constantin Brancusi and fetching over twice its lowest pre-sale estimate, Christie's said.