Sotheby’s made its highest ever London sale yesterday with an auction of impressionist, modern and surrealist art, a day after rival Christie’s set a record high for any sale ever held in London by an auction house.

Prices for top-end art have soared in recent years, driven by an expanding class of super-rich collectors in emerging markets and easy money from the world's central banks. Sotheby's said buyers from 44 countries took home 79 works by artists such as Picasso and Van Gogh, worth a total of £163 million.

Top lot of the auction was a painting by Danish-French impressionist Camille Pissarro, Le Boulevard Montmartre, matinee de printemps, which sold for £20 million.

The sale also included 37 works from a private collection of Holocaust survivor Jan Krugier, which included pieces by Picasso, Goya, Degas and Alberto Giacometti and sold for £53 million.

Sotheby’s said the number of bidders registered for yesterday’s sale was the highest ever for a London sale of modern and impressionist art by the auction house.

Sales at the New York-based auction house grew by almost 20 per cent last year, making it the fastest growing art auctioneer in 2013.

Reuters