Self Portrait with Black Cap by Jacek Malczewski, $120,000 (£98,580) at Bonhams Skinner.
He is particularly well known for his self-portraits, painting dozens towards the end of his life.
Self Portrait with Black Cap, 1925, a 2ft 2in x 15in (65 x 36cm) oil on canvas mounted on paperboard, depicts the artist in his trademark black cap in the interior of the Luslawice Mansion where the artist’s sisters lived, and where he visited often.
Malczewski’s work appears for sale with some regularity in Poland where six-figure dollar prices are relatively common.
However, this picture, which surpassed a $70,000- 90,000 estimate and hammered for $120,000 (£98,580) on November 2, was sold in Marlborough, Massachusetts.
It was part of an exceptional collection of more than 60 Polish paintings offered at Bonhams Skinner (28/27% buyer’s premium) on behalf of the family of the logician and mathematician Alfred Tarski (1901-83).
Like many of the artists in his collection, Tarski had been born in Warsaw to Jewish parents.
He and his wife Maria Witkowska had been avid art collectors but left Poland after the Nazi invasion in 1939, moving to California where Tarski taught mathematics at Berkeley.
