David Hockney painting sells for $90.3m at auction, breaking record for a living artist

Auction house Christie's revealed that Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) fetched the amount after more than nine minutes of bidding. The figure surpasses the $58.4m amassed by US artist Jeff Koons and his Balloon Dog (Orange) in 2013.

Applause is said to have broken out in the Manhattan sales room after the oil painting from Hockney, 81, was sold to a telephone bidder. Christie's has declined to reveal the seller's identity.

The auction house had estimated the piece of art at $80m, deeming it “one of the great masterpieces of the modern era”. It depicts a man - said to be Hockney's former lover Peter Schlesinger - perched on the edge of a pool, looking at another person swimming in his direction.

“We rarely can say, ‘This is the one opportunity to buy the best painting from the artist.’ This is it,” Ana Maria Celis, vice-president of postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s, said before the sale.

Bloomberg reports that the painting's seller was Joe Lewis, the billionaire owner of football team Tottenham Hotspur.

The record for the most expensive piece of art ever sold at auction is held by Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi which was snapped up for $450.3m just last year.