A set of ink-brush paintings by the Chinese artist Qi Baishi has sold for 931.5m yuan (£105m), breaking all records for Chinese paintings, a Beijing auction house has said.

The group of 12 panels painted in 1925 were sold at auction on Sunday night, Beijing Poly International Auction said.

Although the self-taught painter is barely known outside China, his pieces can command prices associated with artists such as Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. The sale makes Qi the first Chinese artist to surpass $100m for one piece, the auction house said. It declined to reveal the buyer’s identity.

The work, Twelve Landscape Screens, depicts mountains, villages and trees in bloom, with soft blue, grey, brown and pink tones. The panels measure 1.8 metres by 47cm.

Timeline The 10 most expensive works of art sold at auction Show Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi sold for $400 million at Christie’s ($450.3m, including auction house premium) One of four versions of The Scream created by Munch and the only one that is privately owned. The painting sold for $119,922,500 Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (1932) sold at Christie's in New York for $106,482,500 L’homme qui Marche I (1961) by Alberto Giacometti sold for £65,001,250 ($105,182,398) at Sotheby’s in London Picasso’s Boy With a Pipe (1905) sold at Sotheby's in New York for $104,168,000 Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912)went under the hammer at Christie’s New York and sold for $87,936,000 Francis Bacon’s Triptych (1976) sold for $85.9m to oligarch Roman Abramovich A Chinese 18th century Qianlong dynasty porcelain vase sold for £53,100,000 ($85,921,461) at Bainbridges auction house in London Dora Maar au Chat (1941) by Pablo Picasso sold for £51,560,080 ($83,429,503) at Sotheby's in London Portrait of Dr Paul Gachet (1890) by Vincent van Gogh sold for $82,500,000 (£50,985,692) at Christie’s in New York

The value of Qi’s work by auction turnover came in third behind his compatriot Zhang Daqian and Picasso in 2016.

Qi was one of the world’s most valued Chinese artists last year, according to Artprice, a French online art price database.

He was born to a poor family in 1864 and worked as a carpenter before setting off to travel around China at 40. Qi, best known for his paintings of landscapes, trees and small animals, died in Beijing in 1957 aged 93.

In 2011, one of his works, an Eagle on Pine Tree, sold for $55m (£41m) in Beijing. That year represented a peak for the Chinese art market, with total sales surpassing $11bn, according to the art market website Artnet. Various pieces by Qi sold for more than $230m overall in 2016.



Chinese artwork is overwhelmingly bought and sold within the country, and Chinese painting and calligraphy represented more than 80% of the domestic market last year.