Cairo market scene by Franz Xavier Kosler, Can$100,000 (£54,055) at Kavanagh Auctions.
The Austrian artist's textbook Orientalist scene Merchants in a North African Market, painted in 1896, holds the current record for the artist: £200,000 at Christie’s London in July 2009.
The Kosler canvas consigned to Kavanagh Auctions (15% buyer’s premium) in Montreal on July 26 measured 2ft 9in x 4ft 6in (84cm x 1.37m).
After absentee bids began the contest at Can$42,000, two phone bidders from Europe competed. Toward the end, the price rose in Can$2000 increments.
“The person who bid Can$96,000 was reluctant to bid Can$100,000 (£54,055),” Angus Tasker, one of Kavanagh’s co-owners recalled. “There was a 20-second hesitation. We thought he wasn’t going to get there, but he finally did say, ‘One more’.”
