Goya sketches "lost" for 130 years sold at auction

LONDON (Reuters) - Three sketches by Spanish master Goya, presumed lost for more than 130 years, sold at auction on Tuesday for four million pounds, double the pre-sale estimate.

The drawings, sold by Christie's in London, were last recorded at a Paris sale of works by the artist in 1877 and all come from Goya's celebrated private albums.

They were sold from a Swiss private collection and were in "exceptional" condition because they were never framed or exposed to light.

The top lot of the three was "Down They Come", from album D called "Witches and Women", depicting four women fighting as they fly through the air.

It sold for $4.5 million (2.28 million pounds), a world record at auction for a Goya work on paper and more than twice the pre-sale estimate.

Next was "Repentance", representing a seated man praying before a cross, which went under the hammer for $1.9 million, and finally "The Constable Lampinos Stitched Inside a Dead Horse" ($1.5 million).

Goya outlines the story of Lampinos at the bottom of the drawing, explaining how an unpopular and corrupt local official was stitched inside a dead horse by the people as punishment.

According to the inscription, he survived the night, but in a subsequent drawing by Goya, now at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, he was eventually killed when they pinned him down and injected him with lime using a giant syringe.

Later on Tuesday as part of its old masters auctions, Christie's offers a work by French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau with a pre-sale estimate of $6-10 million.

Rival Sotheby's this week offers "Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen" by Frans Hals, expected to make $6-10 million, and a painting by British master JMW Turner with a pre-sale estimate of $10-14 million.

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