A lithograph by Prince Charles sold for $90,000 at an auction to benefit a hospital that bore the brunt of Northern Ireland's worst-ever terrorist attack.
The signed and dated lithograph of one of Charles' watercolors of Windsor Castle was sold Wednesday to support County Tyrone Hospital, which treated most of the 29 people killed and 370 wounded in an Aug. 15 car bomb by IRA dissidents in the town of Omagh.The picture, the first piece of art by Prince Charles to be auctioned anywhere, had been valued at up to $5,000 by Christie's auctioneers in London. However, bidding opened at $3,400 and soared to more than $85,000 in about three minutes.
Charles donated the picture after visiting the hospital and the bomb-ravaged town three days after the attack.
It was sold alongside 200 other donated works, mostly by Irish artists including Jack Yeats, older brother of the Nobel Prize-winning poet. In all, more than $255,000 was raised.