For more news and videos visit ➡ http://english.ntdtv.com<br />Follow us on Twitter ➡ http://twitter.com/NTDTelevision<br />Add us on Facebook ➡ http://on.fb.me/s5KV2C<br /><br />A record was set on Monday for the highest price ever reached by a Danish work of art at auction.<br /><br />Sotheby's Auction House reports that Vilhelm Hammershoi's "Ida Reading a Letter" sold for 1.7 million pounds (15.7 million Danish Krone, $2.6 million).<br /><br />The painting was hotly pursued by three bidders on the telephones, before finally selling to an international private collector, hugely surpassing the pre-sale estimate of 500,000-700,000 pounds (4.57-6.4 million Danish Krone, 800,000-1,120,000 USD).<br /><br />The price achieved was almost three times above the previous record.<br /><br />"Ida Reading a Letter" was one of five paintings by the artist on sale in London.<br /><br />[Nina Wedell-Wedellsborg, Head of Sotheby's Denmark Office]:<br />"A fantastic day for Denmark and for the Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershoi. We made a world record today for the artist at auction. It made, 'Ida Reading a Letter,' it made 1.7 million pounds, and the total of the five Hammershoi works - they made 4.3 million pounds so we're very very happy about the result."<br /><br />"Ida Reading a Letter," painted in 1899, was among the first works painted by Hammershoi.<br /><br />In his subtle use of light, muted tones and subject, Hammershoi perhaps owes his greatest debt to the Dutch seventeenth-century master Johannes Vermeer, and he would have seen Vermeer's works first-hand on a trip to Holland in 1887.<br /><br />The composition is remarkably similar to Vermeer's "Woman Reading a Letter" to the extent that it seems impossible Hammershøi did not have this work in mind.<br /><br />[Nina Wedell-Wedellsborg, Head of Sotheby's Denmark Office]:<br />"He's now finally this amazing minimalistic, amazing light that he's using in his works. You could draw a parallel to Vermeer, you can draw a parallel to Whistler. He has finally moved up in the same class and group as painters at the same time when he worked.
