Boy with a Pipe ~ Picasso

French Title : Garçon à la pipe
Year : 1905 Oil on Canvas
Say HELLO! to the most expensive painting in the auction history! Yup, the painting beats the price of Van Gogh's Potrait of Dr. Gatchet (which was as sold to a Japanese billionaire in 1990 for $82.5m at Christie's) as the most expensive painting sold to an annoymous bidder for $104m. Sotheby's doesn't even want to reveal the bidder's nationality. I saw the painting on Sotheby's website before the auction day and couldn't even believe that this painting could be so expensive! That made Picasso has four of the top 10 most expensive paintings sold at auction, ahead of Van Gogh with three. It was painted by Picasso at age 24 soon after his settling in Montmartre, showing a young Parisian working boy crowned with a garland of roses, holding a pipe in his left hand. It was bought by John Whitney in 1950 for $30,000 and it was among all the 30 collection that was auction on May 5 2004 and all the preceeds will go to the Greentree Foundation which was founded by Betsey Whitney, a philanthropist. Charles Moffet, co-director of Impressionist and modern art at Sotheby's praised it as one of Picasso's most celebrated images of adolescent beauty.