A previously unknown "exceptional" portrait by Pablo Picasso of one of his lovers was unveiled Thursday at auction in Paris, with a starting price of eight million euros ($9.5 million).
The painting, titled "Bust of a Woman with a Flowery Hat," depicts Dora Maar, a French photographer, painter, and poet who was one of Picasso's most famous inspirations.
Auction commissioner Christophe Lucien of the Drouot auction house in Paris said the value of the 80-by-90-centimeter oil painting is estimated at "around eight million euros, with a starting price that could rise."
Picasso painted the painting on July 11, 1943, and it was purchased in August 1944 by a private collector, the grandfather of its current owners.
Agnès Sivester-Barbe, a Picasso specialist present at the unveiling, said the painting "was little known to the public and had only been exhibited in the Spanish master's Paris studio."
She noted that the painting "is quite exceptional and represents a threshold in the history of art and the history of Picasso."
Maar appears in the painting with a melancholy but harmonious face, wearing an adorned hat, at the moment the Spanish artist abandoned her for a younger artist, Françoise Gilot. Maar was Picasso's most important model and muse, with some 60 works centered around her.
Sales of Picasso paintings are an important indicator of the overall state of the art market, which has been in decline in recent years.
The total value of sales reached $223 million in 2024, roughly one-third of the $597 million spent on the Spanish artist's works the previous year, according to auction data from the consulting firm Art Price.
An "exceptional" painting of one of Picasso's mistresses sells for $9.5 million.
