Vampire

On 3 November 2008, seven weeks after the collapse of the Lehman Brothers bank had shaken every market, this canvas came up for sale at Sotheby's in New York. Four bidders went after it, and it sold for $38.2 million, at that point the highest price ever paid for a Munch at auction. It had not been on the market in more than 70 years. Collectors in Norway bought it in 1903, and from 1934 it passed down through one private family, spending years on loan at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Munch painted this embrace several times in the mid-1890s, and this was the only one of his early oil versions still in private hands. The others belong to museums in Oslo and Gothenburg. He signed and dated this one in the top right corner, E. Munch 1894.