Art museum wins auction for painting Vivid double portrait by Alice Neel sells at Sotheby’s for $1.56 million

Competing against as many as five bidders at Sotheby’s auction house in New York on Wednesday night, the Cleveland Museum of Art purchased a vivid double portrait by the 20th-century American painter Alice Neel for $1.56 million, believed to be a record price for the artist.

“We’re happy, very happy,” said C. Griffith Mann, the museum’s chief curator, who followed the auction online from an office in Cleveland.

He said the museum was near its limit in the bidding for the painting, which had been estimated to sell for $400,000 to $500,000.

“We were close enough to be nervous but still had a little bit of gas in the tank,” Mann said. “But definitely, it was a nerve-racking experience.”

Neel (1900-1984) was known for portraits painted in a raw, unfussy style that made her subjects look emotionally exposed.

The painting portrays Jackie Curtis, a transvestite who played a role in the 1968 Andy Warhol film, “Flesh,” and Rita Red, another member of the Warhol circle.

The purchase will mean a homecoming for the work, which was part of a widely admired collection of contemporary art assembled by the late Mary S. Myers and her husband, Louis S. Myers, the founder of Akron’s Myers Industries who died in 1993.

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