4. Woman III (Willem De Kooning) - £107.1m ($160.3m)
Dutch-American abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning painted Woman III as part of a series of six works of one specific female between 1951 and 1953. Part of the collection at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art between 1978 and 1994, Woman III could not be shown in public following the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Traded in 1994 by Swiss art-dealers Thomas Ammann Fine Art to American music tycoon David Geffen, the work was then bought privately by American hedge-fund manager Steven A Cohen (his second painting on this list) in November for the equivalent of $160.3million (£107.1million).
NUFC editor for WhatCulture.com/NUFC. History graduate (University of Edinburgh) and NCTJ-trained journalist. I love sports, hopelessly following Newcastle United and Newcastle Falcons. My pastimes include watching and attending sports matches religiously, reading spy books and sampling ales.
