The Rare Bird Review

A rarely-seen portrait by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani of his lover Jeanne Hebuterne has been sold for £3.25m ($7.6 million)in London.

A previous stop on the World Art Tour featured a Modigliani painting of a lounge singer with her Do-Wop chorus of flamingos.

Portrait de Jeanne Hebuterne had been expected to fetch £2m during the Christie's auction.

Modigliani painted it shortly before he died of tuberculosis in 1920, after which the pregnant Hebuterne threw herself from a 5th story window in Paris and died. She was eight month pregnant at the time. Modigliani used golden colors and sunlight for this portrait resulting in a somewhat off-color flamingo, but a good bird none-the-less.

The identity of the buyer was not revealed by the auction house.

A Christie's spokesman said the painting "had never been offered on the open market, and exhibited only rarely in the 85 years since it was painted".

The highest price of the day, however, was in New York at a Sotheby sale where the 1882 painting Dans les Roses et Flamingos(Madame Leon Clapisson) by Auguste Renoir was sold for $23.5 million. It was bought by casino owner Steve Wynn, who will display the work in his Las Vegas gallery.

This painting shows Madame Clapisson sitting in her garden with roses in her lap while a flock of flamingos works at aphid elimination around her.

All in all it was quite a day in the art world and Bird is certainly proud of the acclaim his ancestors are bringing to his family.

L'il P-Bird has promised more commentary on these and other painting sold today when he reurns from his sabatical.