Six masterpieces that broke auction records

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A 1962 painting by Andy Warhol of a one dollar banknote smashed its pre-sale estimate and propelled auction house Sotheby's to the highest ever total for an art auction in London yesterday.

The work, titled Silver Certificate, raised £20.9m, The Independent reports, making it the most expensive lot sold on a day on which a total of £130.4m was paid to secure works by noted artists including Francis Bacon, Gerhard Richter and Lucian Freud.

Despite the huge sums involved, none of the lots came close to breaking the record for the most expensive works of art ever sold at auction.

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More of the world's rich are ploughing huge sums into an art market that has become increasingly investment focused. Since the turn of the millennium, six works have smashed a record that was held for 14 years by Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of Dr Gachet, sold for $82.5m (£46m) at an auction by Christie's in New York in 1990.

6. Pablo Picasso, Garcon à la Pipe. May 2004, $104.1m

The first of no less than three entries by the Spanish painter, Garcon à la Pipe, or Boy with a Pipe, smashed the record when it was sold to an anonymous bidder at Sotheby's in New York for $104.1m (£58m) in May 2004.

The BBC says Picasso completed the work when he was just 24. It depicts a young Parisian working boy crowned with a garland of roses and holding a pipe in his left hand.

5. Alberto Giacometti, L'Homme Qui Marche I. February 2010, £65m

It took nearly six years before this new high watermark was beaten by Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti's L'Homme Qui Marche I, or The Walking Man I, in February 2010. The sculpture was sold at Sotheby's in London for £65m, which The Guardian says was five times more than the estimate. Based on the exchange rate at the time, this just nipped ahead with an equivalent dollar value of $104.3m.

The sculpture, cast in 1961, is considered to be one of the most important works of Giacometti. It was originally part of the collection of Dresdner Bank but was acquired by Commerzbank during the banking crisis.

4. Pablo Picasso, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust. May 2010, $106m

The second work by Picasso and the first of two of his nudes, a 1932 painting titled Nude, Green Leaves and Bust broke the record again just three months later, raising $106m (£70m). It was sold at Christie's auction house in New York and had belonged to the late Los Angeles collectors Frances and Sidney Brody since the 1950s.

The BBC says an unnamed telephone bidder made the winning bid. The painting had been expected to sell for $70m-$90m.

3. Edvard Munch, The Scream. May 2012, $120m

One of the most recognisable paintings in the world, The Scream by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, fetched a massive $120m (£74m) when it went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in New York in May 2012. The Daily Telegraph says the work was bought by one of two anonymous telephone bidders, who had gone head to head from about the $80m mark.

The piece, which was completed in 1895, was sold by Petter Olsen, a Norwegian businessman. His family knew Munch personally and had owned the portrait since the 1930s.

2. Sir Francis Bacon, Three Studies of Lucian Freud. November 2013, $142m

A triptych by Irish-born artist Francis Bacon of his friend and fellow artist Lucian Freud topped this a year and a half later, when it sold for $142m (£89m) at Christie's in New York in November 2013. The BBC says it was again sold to an anonymous bidder and reached well above its pre-sale estimate of $85m.

The work, completed in 1969, is considered one of Bacon's greatest masterpieces. It was sold after just six minutes of intense bidding.

1. Pablo Picasso, Women of Algiers (Version O). May 2015, $179m

But the place at the top of the table goes, predictably, to Picasso, whose last entry on the list sold for an eye-watering $179m (£115m) at Christie's in New York in May of this year. Les Femmes d'Alger (Version O), or The Women of Algiers (Version O), is the last in a series of 15 paintings in a series inspired by an 1834 work by Eugene Delacroix.

The piece, which dates from 1955, was sold by an unnamed vendor who had acquired it for around $32m in 1997, The Guardian reports.