Degas pastel fetches record auction price

Posted: Tuesday, June 29, 1999

LONDON (AP) - An anonymous telephone bidder paid $28 million Monday for a pastel drawing by Edgar Degas, a record price for a work by the French artist, Sotheby's auctioneers said.

"Dancer at rest," comes from a series of acclaimed studies Degas began in the late 1870s.

The picture had been expected to raise up to $11 million in the Sotheby's sale of Impressionist and modern art.

A second Degas pastel, "Woman sitting behind a piano," a study of a woman at a piano dating from around 1882-85, sold for $4.8 million.

The two works were sold by descendants of Jules-Emile Boivin, the French businessman who bought them in 1885.

The last record price for a Degas was $13.6 million paid for "The Laundresses" at Christie's auction house in London in 1987.

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