Pursuits

Top Ten Art Sales of 2009

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While the art market shrank in 2009, many individual artworks achieved strong results at auction.

1. Raphael's chalk drawing "Head of a Muse" sold for 29.2 million pounds ($47.6 million at the time) at Christie's London on Dec. 8, setting an auction record for a work of art on paper. It was bought on the telephone, dealers said, by the U.S.-based collector Leon Black, chief executive of Apollo Global Management LLC and a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.