Modern art auction generates £61m

The Modigliani painting sold for more than £6m

Paintings including works by Picasso, Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh and Modigliani have fetched £61m at auction in London.

The total included £6.2m paid for the 1918 painting Garcon a la Veste Bleu by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani.

The auction at Sotheby's also saw the sale of Vincent van Gogh's Deux Crabes, which fetched £5.5m.

Meanwhile, a separate auction at Christie's in London fetched £28.9m, including £6.6m for Matisse's 1942 masterpiece Odalisque au Fauteuil Noir.

The painting, of an exotic concubine reposing in a chair, was the top selling lot in the auction of impressionist and modern art at Christie's on Tuesday night.

Sotheby's said the £61m fetched at its auction showed "both the buoyancy of the market and of the fine quality of the works we had on offer".

Egon Schiele's painting Liebespaar sold for £1.9m, making the 1913 artwork the highest-priced work by the Austrian artist.

The sale was billed as the biggest modern art sale in the UK for a decade.

Picasso's Femme Couchee was among the 60 works on sale

But Pierre-Auguste Renoir's 1871 work Portrait de Rapha Mantre, which had been expected to sell for more than £6m, did not reach its reserve price.

Both auctions were promoted as being part of London's Art Fortnight, a series of events that promote the capital's place in the international art scene.