By The Associated Press, cbc.ca, Updated: July 1, 2010 11:47 AM
Warhol's Silver Liz sells for $10M
Auction house Christie's says a rare Andy Warhol portrait of Hollywood screen legend Elizabeth Taylor has sold for $10.1 million US in London.
Silver Liz was painted in 1963, the year Taylor became the first actress to earn $1 million for a role, and is part of a series of 13 paintings created by Warhol that year.
It had been in a private collection for 20 years and had not been seen in public.
The portrait went to an anonymous bidder in London late Wednesday. Measuring 101 centimetres by 99 centimetres, the work was sold by a private U.S. collector.
Taylor was one of Warhol's muses but Christie's said that Silver Liz was one of only two Warhol portraits to show the actress with her famous violet eyes.
Sales of the pop artist's works have recently fetched much higher prices. A silkscreen self-portrait, owned by designer-turned-filmmaker Tom Ford, sold for $32.5 million US in New York in May.
In 2007, Hugh Grant sold another painting of Taylor from the Warhol series at Christie's in New York for $23.6 million US.
