Correspondent Hugh Schofield: This is the last Picasso collection hitherto unseen by the art market

The works, virtually unseen by the public for 50 years, come from a private collection kept by his one-time mistress, Dora Maar, who died last year.

At the start of a three-day auction in Paris, 32 paintings and drawings by Picasso sold for $27m.

The Weeping Woman

The star exhibit - a portrait of Maar entitled The Weeping Woman - exceeded expectations by selling for more than $6.5m.

The 1937 masterpiece was painted in the wake of Picasso's Guernica series inspired by the horror of the Spanish Civil War.

Another painting, Dora Maar with Green Nails, went for the smaller sum of just over $4m.

Also going under the hammer are small portraits of Dora made into jewellery, sketches on matchbox covers, photographs of Picasso, original books, notes, postcards, and letters.

Mistress and muse

Maar had lived as a recluse

Dora Maar, whose real name was Theodora Markovitch, was born of a Yugoslav father and a French mother.

She was Picasso's lover for seven years from 1936 after the two met in a cafe in Paris where she was herself an aspiring artist.

She had a tempestuous relationship with Picasso involving fights with his wife Olga and another of his mistresses, Marie-Therese Walter.

The minotaur illustrates Picasso's passion for his lover

When the affair ended in 1943, she sank into depression and lived the rest of her life as a recluse, hidden away with her paintings.

It was only after Maar's death that art experts examining her estate found the major works stored in a bank vault.

But not everyone is thrilled by the discovery.

James Lord, a close friend of Maar's, said: "Dora would be just horrified at all this.

"All this stuff was so personal to her. It's rather morbid to have it up for sale."