«I LIKE MONEY ON THE WALL»

Pablo Picasso's 1903 Portrait d'Angel Fernandez de Soto sold Wednesday in London for $54 million, but a Claude Monet water lily painting failed to find a buyer.The Picasso, which shows an absinthe drinker at a bar in Barcelona, had been expected to sell for about $40 million. It was sold by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's charity organization.The Lloyd Webber Foundation had planned to sell the painting in New York in 2006, but withdrew it after a claim that the Nazis had stolen the painting from its Jewish owner in the 1930s. The ownership dispute was resolved last December, freeing the work to go to auction in London Wednesday.The Christie's auction failed to find a buyer for Nymphaes, the Monet that some experts had predicted would bring in a record $45 million.A Sotheby's sale Tuesday of a self-portrait by French painter Edouard Manet resulted in a price of $34 million, a record for his work.

CBC
June 23 2010