Garçon à la pipe

Garçon à la Pipe (Boy with a Pipe) is a painting by Pablo Picasso. It was painted in 1905, during the 24-year-old artist's Rose Period, soon after he settled in the Montmartre section of Paris, France. The oil on canvas painting depicts a Parisian boy holding a pipe in his left hand. Owned by the estate of John Hay Whitney, on May 5, 2004 it sold for $US104.1 million at an auction in Sotheby's in New York City, after having been given a pre-sale estimate of $70 million by the auction house. Many art critics have stated that the painting's high sale price has much more to do with the artist's name than with the merit or historical importance of the painting. The Washington Post's article on the sale contained the following characterisation of the reaction: full article at wikipedia