Painting of Picasso's Mistress Fetches $40M

La Lecture sells for double estimate
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 9, 2011 2:02 AM CST
Updated Feb 9, 2011 5:53 AM CST
Picasso Mistress Painting Fetches $40M
This photo released by Sotheby's auction house shows the painting La Lecture by Pablo Picasso.    (AP Photo / Sotheby's / ho)

A painting of the teenage mistress Pablo Picasso picked up outside a Paris Metro station in 1927 has sold for $40 million at auction. La Lecture, which shows Marie-Therese Walter asleep in a chair, was sold to an anonymous buyer for double the expected price, the Telegraph reports. The painter charmed the 17-year-old Walter—28 years his junior—with the line: "I am Picasso. You and I are going to do great things together.'' The affair was long kept secret because Walter was underage, and because the painter was married.
(More Pablo Picasso stories.)

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