Focus on Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) and discuss the Sale history.
The painting was originally sold to James Astor and his wife in 1972 for $18,000 (equivalent to $126,000 in 2022). Six months later it was sold on for $50,000 (equivalent to $350,000 in 2022). It was acquired in 1983 by the American billionaire David Geffen, who sold it to British billionaire Joe Lewis in 1995 at an undisclosed price.It was included in the Hockney exhibition, which toured the Tate Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Centre Georges Pompidou from February 2017 to February 2018.On 15 November 2018, in nine minutes of bidding, it was sold to an unknown buyer for $90.3 million at Christie's auction house in New York City, setting an auction record for a living artist. The sale broke the previous record for a living artist of $58 million for Jeff Koons' Balloon Dog (Orange) in 2013 and more than tripled the record for a work by Hockney, $28.5 million for Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica set in May 2018.  The highest known prices for a painting by a living artist in private sales are for two paintings by Jasper Johns (born 1930): in 2006, Kenneth C. Griffin bought Johns' False Start for about $80 million ($116 million in 2022) from David Geffen, and in 2010 Steven A. Cohen bought Johns' 1958 Flag for around $110 million (equivalent to $148 million in 2022) from Leo Castelli's son.
Joe Lewis auction record for a living artist Kenneth C. Griffin Centre Georges Pompidou Jasper Johns Tate Tate Gallery Steven A. Cohen David Geffen Christie's Jeff Koons Leo Castelli Metropolitan Museum of Art