Boris Grigoriev’s two-panel painting "Preparing Crepes: A Pair" sold for $1,258,500, well above the high expectation of $700,000. The work had hung for decades in Giovanni, a French restaurant in New York popular with Russian émigrés as well as artists and socialites such as Ernest Hemingway and Ingrid Bergman. Originally a single canvas, it was cut in two and partially repainted because Giovanni Pramaggiore, the restaurant’s owner and the painting’s subject, considered the giant portrait to be of an immodest size.

Courtesy Sotheby's