Rare Picasso Portrait Sold for $29 Million

NEW YORK — A rare portrait from Picasso’s blue period sold Monday for $29 million--three times its estimated value and the highest price paid for a painting at worldwide auction since the market flattened out five years ago.

Another sign of the auction’s success was the $14.85-million sale of a painting by Henri Matisse, the highest price ever paid for a Matisse sold at auction.

Bidding for Picasso’s “Angel Fernandez de Soto,” sometimes called “The Absinthe Drinker,” began at $8 million and rose until a telephone bid from an anonymous private collector went unchallenged.