Modigliani work fetches $27 million

An Amedeo Modigliani portrait of a woman in a black hat fetched $26.9 million in bidding Monday at Sotheby’s Holdings Inc., kicking off a week of London auctions.

“Jeanne Hebuterne (au Chapeau),” a 1919 painting of the artist’s mistress, was the top-priced lot of the season. The seller was Marvin Schein, a director of publicly traded medical-products distributor Henry Schein Inc. of Melville, N.Y., and founder of Schein Dental Equipment Corp. The buyer was not immediately identified.

Sotheby’s New York set a $31.3 million record for Modigliani in 2004 with another Hebuterne picture, also from 1919.