Jenny Saville Painting Sells for $12.4 M. at Sotheby’s London, Record for Living Female Artist

Photo from an Interview with Jenny Saville“On Friday night, in a salesroom at Sotheby’s London, Jenny Saville’s masterful seated nude self-portrait Propped (1992), which features the artist gazing down at the viewer, with a long quotation from a feminist French critic scribbled across the canvas, made a record-shattering £9.5 million ($12.4 million) against an estimate of £3 million to £4 million.

That figure is not only the new high mark for a Saville at auction, it is also the most ever paid at auction for the work of a living female artist.” (Reprinted from article by Judd Tully on Art News)

Jenny Saville (born 7 May 1970) is a contemporary British painter associated with the Young British Artists, a group of concept driven artists. Saville is often credited with “reinventing figure painting for contemporary art, as well as originating a new and challenging way of painting the female nude…”. From the start of her career, Saville has engaged in an exploration of the body that borrows conventions from a long tradition in figure painting.