LONDON — David Hockney’s 1966 Pop Art masterwork “The Splash” sold on Tuesday night, much as expected, for 23.1 million pounds, or about $29.8 million, with fees, at a Sotheby’s auction of contemporary art overshadowed by the coronavirus outbreak in China.

The work, the star lot at the auction, is one of three painted versions of Mr. Hockney’s celebrated image of the spray thrown up by an unseen diver who has just plunged into the blue of a California swimming pool. The best-known of those images is the monumental 1967 canvas, “A Bigger Splash,” in the Tate collection in London.

This medium-size version, measuring 6 feet along each side, was being sold by the Chinese real estate billionaire Joseph Lau, according to Bloomberg News. (Sotheby’s declined to comment on the seller’s identity.) The painting was acquired in 2006 for £2.9 million, or about $5.4 million at the time, at the same London salesroom.

The Hockney sold to a single telephone bid. It was the third-highest auction price yet achieved for one of the painter’s works, but it was still well behind the $90.3 million bid for “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” in 2018.