1921 Portrait of Prince Edward Sells for $2.3 Million

NEW YORK —  A Sir Alfred James Munnings portrait of Edward, Prince of Wales, on horseback sold for more than $2.3 million Monday on the fifth day of a marathon auction of items from the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s Paris home.

The 1921 signed oil on canvas depicts Edward attired in riding clothes astride his chestnut hunter Forest Witch. It commemorated the prince’s 1920 Northamptonshire season of hunting, an activity his parents, King George V and Queen Mary, persuaded him to give up in 1929.

An anonymous telephone bidder drove the price up to $2,312,500, including the premium for the auction house Sotheby’s, which received the consignment for the auction from businessman Mohammed Fayed.

The price set a record for Munnings, a painter noted for royal and equestrian portraits. His final royal portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on her horse Aureole in 1953 is now in the queen’s collection.

It was also the highest price paid thus far for any lot in the nine-day auction.

London’s National Portrait Gallery purchased Gerald Lesley Brockhurst’s 1939 “Portrait of the Duchess of Windsor,” which was commissioned by the duke, for $107,000, setting a record for the artist.

Also selling Monday was a set of first editions of Sir Winston Churchill’s history of World War I, “The World Crisis,” which was purchased by Texas businessman John McCall for $145,000.

McCall also paid $41,400 for a signed copy of the late President John F. Kennedy’s book “Profiles in Courage” inscribed to the duke and duchess.

Edward abdicated the British throne in 1936 to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson and was given the title of Duke of Windsor.