text: This 1917 oil painting, "Nu couche (sur le cote gauche)" by Amedeo Modigliani, was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York for more than $157 million, in their Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale Monday,... (Associated Press) 
   
   This 1917 oil painting, "Nu couche (sur le cote gauche)" by Amedeo Modigliani, was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York for more than $157 million, in their Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale Monday, May 14, 2018. Sotheby’s says the painting had the highest pre-auction estimate for an artwork at... (Associated Press) 
   
   This 1917 oil painting, "Nu couche (sur le cote gauche)" by Amedeo Modigliani, was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York for more than $157 million, in their Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale Monday, May 14, 2018. Sotheby’s says the painting had the highest pre-auction estimate for an artwork at... (Associated Press) This 1917 oil painting, "Nu couche (sur le cote gauche)" by Amedeo Modigliani, was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York for more than $157 million, in their Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale Monday,... (Associated Press) 
   
   NEW YORK (AP) — A 1917 painting by Amedeo Modigliani of a reclining nude woman that was once considered obscene in Paris sold for over $157 million at an auction in Manhattan on Monday. 
   
   "Nu couche (sur le cote gauche)" was the highlight of Sotheby's "Impressionist & Modern Art" sale featuring Pablo Picasso works spanning seven decades, and paintings by Claude Monet, Edvard Munch and Georgia O'Keeffe. 
   
   Modigliani shocked Europe at the turn of the 19th century with his series of 22 nudes reclining in every possible position. When the Italian-born, Jewish artist's nudes were unveiled at a Paris gallery, police demanded that it be shut down, offended by the unflinching strokes of his oil brush that thrust art's nude figure into the modern era. 
   
   In the past half-dozen years, prices for Modigliani's works have soared, from $26 million the current owner paid for "Nu couche (sur le cote gauche)" in 2003 to as much as $170 million. 
   
   Picasso's "Le Repos," an image of his lover and "golden muse," Marie-Therese Walter, sold for $40 million. It was one of 11 Picasso works that were offered Monday evening. 
   
   Claude Monet's "Matinee sur la Seine" (Morning on the Seine), part of a lineup of river landscapes he painted while on a boat, capturing the changing light from sunrise to a lightning storm, brought in $20.6 million. 
   
   Both Munch's "Summer Night" and O'Keeffe "Lake George with White Birch" each fetched over $11 million. 
   
   Modigliani's painting, which had the highest pre-auction estimate at $150 million, was still well short of the record for the most expensive painting ever sold. 
   
   Leonardo da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi" sold last year at Christie's for $450 million. ||||| The painting, one of only five nudes ever auctioned, gave Sotheby’s its highest price yet but failed to set a new record for the artist 
   
   Nu couché (sur le côté gauche), a reclining nude by the modernist master Amadeo Modigliani, fetched $157.2m in New York on Monday night – the highest price in Sotheby’s history. But it failed to beat the $170m record set for the artist three years ago. 
   
   Sotheby’s auctioneer Helena Newman led a packed salesroom bidding that started at $125m but stalled at $139m, well short of the 2015 record of $170m (including fees) for another nude, Nu couché (Reclining Nude), at rival Christie’s. 
   
   The painting, one of the largest works Modigliani ever made and one of only five of his nudes ever to come up for auction, was hoped to be able to reassure the market that in an industry increasingly concerned with contemporary painters early 20th -entury masterpieces are again finding favor. 
   
   That was emphatically true for Modigliani, whose prices have for years lagged behind peers like Picasso and Monet. 
   
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   After a successful $833m sale of items from David Rockefeller’s estate last week, Nu couché was widely predicted to be a singular star of the New York spring auction season. 
   
   Painted in 1917, three years before Modigliani’s death at the age of 35, the picture caused a scandal when exhibited at Modigliani’s first and only solo show at Galerie Berthe Weill in Paris that year. 
   
   When a crowd formed outside the gallery to gawp at the works, the police demanded the immediate closure of the show. 
   
   The painting was reportedly consigned by the Irish horse breeder and trainer John Magnier, who’d picked up the work in 2003 at Christie’s for $26.9m. On that occasion it was placed at auction by the casino mogul Steve Wynn. 
   
   Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Sotheby’s preview of the sale on 4 May. Photograph: Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images 
   
   It was recently included in Tate Modern’s blockbuster exhibition of the artist’s work in London, which brought together 12 of his nudes, the largest number ever assembled in Britain. 
   
   Simon Shaw, Sotheby’s worldwide co-head of the impressionist and modern art department, said it “reimagines the nude for the modern era”. 
   
   Modigliani has proved a problematic artist for top collectors. Last summer, Italian police closed down a Modigliani exhibition in Genoa after it was claimed the majority of the show was comprised of fakes. 
   
   However, last nightSotheby’s confidently put the highest estimate ever placed on a work of art at auction. 
   
   It exceeded the $100m estimate Christie’s placed on last year’s Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (which sold to a Saudi prince for $450m) and the $140m placed on Pablo Picasso’s Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’). 
   
   Magnier was not present at the sale. Though he has not confirmed that he owned the work, there have been strong hints. Magnier has a three-year old colt named Modigliani. Modigliani expert Kenneth Wayne told Artnet News the colt was so named for an association with “excellence and success”.
target: – A nude painting considered too obscene to display in Paris a century ago sold at an auction in New York City for $157.2 million Monday night, setting a new record for Sotheby's auction house but not for artist Amadeo Modigliani, the Guardian reports. Nu couche (sur le cote gauche), the Italian-born artist's largest painting, is one of only five of his nudes ever to hit the auction block. When it was first displayed in Paris a century ago, in Modigliani's first and only solo show, police immediately shut the exhibition down, the AP reports. The artist died three years later at the age of 35. (Another Modigliani nude sold for $170 million in 2015.)