An unidentified Japanese bidding by telephone paid an auction record price of $6.09 million for a work by artist Marc Chagall.
The 1949 painting by the Russian-born artist, "The Bride under the Canopy," was the highest-priced work in Tuesday night's sale at Sothebys of impressionist and modern art.Chagall painted "The Bride Under the Canopy" after he returned to France from the United States.
It shows a bride and groom under an awning, with a large vase of leaves and flowers and a violinist, one of Chagall's "lucky charms."
Another Chagall of a vase of flowers with Russian people and motifs around the edges, "The Farmers' Bouquet," went for $5.02 million. The buyer also was a Japanese telephone bidder.
Sotheby's did not say if the two Chagalls went to the same buyer.
Anonymous Japanese bidders also paid $3.5 million for a 1933 work by Paul Klee, "Arrival of the Bridegroom," and the same price for a Pablo Picasso 1904 blue portrait of the Catalan poet Jaime Sabartes.