Record $104 Million for a Picasso

Pablo Picasso’s 1905 painting “Boy With a Pipe” sold for $104 million Wednesday at Sotheby’s, shattering the record for an auctioned painting.

The total includes the auction price of $93 million plus the auction house’s commission of about $11 million.

The previous record was set by Vincent van Gogh’s 1890 “Portrait of Doctor Gachet,” which was sold to a Japanese billionaire for $82.5 million in 1990 at Christie’s. That price included the auction house’s premium.

Sotheby’s did not say who bought “Boy With a Pipe.”

A 24-year-old Picasso painted “Boy With a Pipe” soon after settling in Montmartre, France. John Hay and Betsey Whitney bought the painting in 1950 for $30,000.

Sotheby’s called the work “one of the most beautiful of the artist’s Rose Period paintings and one of the most important early works by Pablo Picasso ever to appear on the market.”

The painting was part of a collection of major works by Picasso, Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas and others that headlined an auction of 34 paintings from a charitable foundation created by philanthropist Betsey Whitney, Sotheby’s said.

The collection had a presale estimate of more than $140 million. The proceeds of the sale will go to the Greentree Foundation, created in 1982 by Whitney after her husband, John Hay Whitney, died.