This hand-coloured print of Edvard Munch's Madonna sold for about $1.95 million at a Bonhams auction in London on Tuesday. (Bonhams)

A hand-coloured image of Edvard Munch's Madonna has been sold for £1.25 million ($1.95 million), setting a record for a print.

The work, dated 1895 and signed by the artist, had been estimated at between £500,000 and £700,000 ($750,000 to $1 million) by Bonham's auction house in London.

Munch, a Norwegian symbolist painter who lived from 1863 to 1944, reworked the Madonna image many times in his prints and paintings.

This Madonna is yellow and white, set against a halo of blue, green and red.

Munch's mistress, Dagny Juel, was the model for the female figure, and the border contains spermatazoa shapes and a fetus.

The work, described as being in excellent condition, had been in the same family for more than 100 years, Bonhams said.

It was sold on behalf of the estate of the British abstract expressionist artist Frank (Albert) Avray Wilson, but came from the collection of his wife, Ivy Eckbo, the daughter of a Norwegian philanthropist who owned several Munch paintings.