Tamara de Lempicka's portrait of her lover, *La Belle Rafaëla* (1927), sold for £7.47 million ($10.05 million) at Sotheby's London Modern and Contemporary Evening Sale on June 24. The work, estimated at £6–9 million, hammered just above its low estimate to a buyer in the room. It had last appeared at auction in 1985, when it sold for $242,000, then a record for the artist. The painting depicts Rafaëla, a sex worker Lempicka encountered in Paris's Bois de Boulogne, who became her lover and muse.
The sale underscores the sustained market resurgence for Lempicka, whose star waned after World War II but began rising in the mid-2010s. The painting's record price reflects growing institutional and commercial interest, fueled by a 2023 Broadway musical and a major U.S. retrospective. The work is also notable for its feminist reworking of the female nude, challenging male-dominated traditions when it debuted at the 1927 Salon d'Automne.