Lucian Freud's tiny strawberries painting sells for £1.2m - or £120k a strawberry

Lucian Freud’s tiny painting of strawberries went for £1.2 million at an auction last night, making the cost of each strawberry £120,875.

The painting was part of Sotheby’s very first Actual Size sale, where none of the paintings are bigger than the size of the catalogue page on which they are illustrated.

Freud’s miniature painting is only 10.2cm by 12cm, and was estimated to sell for £550,000 to £750,000. The sale is a record for a still-life by Freud, which he painted in 1950 at the height of his fascination with the Old Masters. It was given as a gift to Ann Rothermere, who was a patron of Freud.

The Actual Size sale saw 35 small works go under the hammer, including pieces by Picasso, Cezanne and Van Gogh.

It took place just before the Impressionist and Modern Art sale, which saw two Kandinsky paintings sold for record-breaking prices of £21m and £33m.