Jussi Pylkkanen, president of Christie's Europe, discusses Pablo Picasso's 1903 painting Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto in London in June. The painting fetched $54 million at auction on Wednesday. (Sang Tan/Associated Press)Pablo Picasso's 1903 Portrait d'Angel Fernandez de Soto sold Wednesday in London for $54 million, but a Claude Monet water lily painting failed to find a buyer.

The Picasso, which shows an absinthe drinker at a bar in Barcelona, had been expected to sell for about $40 million. It was sold by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's charity organization.

The Lloyd Webber Foundation had planned to sell the painting in New York in 2006, but withdrew it after a claim that the Nazis had stolen the painting from its Jewish owner in the 1930s. The ownership dispute was resolved last December, freeing the work to go to auction in London Wednesday.

The Christie's auction failed to find a buyer for Nymphaes, the Monet that some experts had predicted would bring in a record $45 million.

French impressionist Edouard Manet's self-portrait Manet à la palette sold for more than $34 million at a Sotheby's auction in London. (Max Nash/Associated Press)A Sotheby's sale Tuesday of a self-portrait by French painter Edouard Manet resulted in a price of $34 million, a record for his work.

The sale of Manet à la palette, painted 1878-79, came in toward the low end of its estimate. It was one of only two self-portraits by the artist, Sotheby's said.

The previous record for a Manet was about $25 million.

Other sales at Sotheby's sale of impressionist and modern art:

• Arbres à collioure by French painter André Derain, $25 million.
• Odalisques jouant aux dames by Henri Matisse, $18.5 million.

A Bonhams auction of impressionist and modern art on Tuesday yielded disappointing results, with Marc Chagall's La revolution and Pablo Picasso's Portrait de Mr Minguell failing to sell.

With files from The Associated Press