Andy Warhol's Liz Taylor sold for $23m

An Andy Warhol painting of actress Dame Elizabeth Taylor has been sold for $23.7m (£11.4m) at an auction in New York.

The 1963 portrait, called Liz, was bought by an anonymous bidder.

The painting had been expected to fetch more than $25m (£11.9m) at Christie's.

The auction house refused to confirm reports that it was British actor Hugh Grant who sold the portrait after he bought it in 2001 for a reported $15m.

Warhol created 12 portraits of the actress as she recovered from illness.

"I started those a long time ago when she was so sick and everybody said she was going to die," the artist said at the time.

"Now I am doing them all over, putting bright colours on her lips and eyes."

In May a painting of a car crash sold for $71.7m (£36.3m), a record for a Warhol piece. The 1963 painting, Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I), depicted an overturned car on fire.

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