A painting by Gustav Klimt has become the third most expensive artwork ever sold in Europe, after fetching a record price of £47,971,250 ($59,321,248) at Sotheby's.

Bauerngarten (Flower Garden) became the Austrian symbolist's highest-priced landscape work when it was sold at the London auction house on Wednesday.

The oil-on-canvas depicting an "informal profusion of poppies, daisies and roses" follows Alberto Giacometti's Walking Man (£65m in 2010) and Peter Paul Rubens' The Massacre Of The Innocents (£49.5m in 2002) in the list of the top three most expensive works sold in Europe.