Picasso painting of muse, future lover fetches European record £50 million

A Pablo Picasso portrait of his muse Marie-Therese Walter with future lover Dora Maar emerging from the shadows fetched £50 million (57 million euros, $69 million) at a London sale Wednesday, a European auction record for a painting. The 1937 “Femme au Beret et a la Robe Quadrillee (Marie-Therese Walter)” beat expectations it would sell for £36 million (41 million euros, $50 million) at the sale of impressionist, surrealist and modern art at auction house Sotheby’s. It was the first time the oil on canvas had emerged on the international art market and headlined the auctioneer’s first major sale of the year, it said. The identity of the seller, and its new owner, were not released. “It’s an incredibly important museum quality picture,” James Mackie, director of the impressionist and modern art department at Sotheby’s, told AFP last week. “It comes from a key era in Picasso’s career, 1937, when he makes the great painting ‘Guernica’,” he added, referring to the masterpiece which portray