An Irish painting unseen in public for more than a century and expected to sell for as little as £50,000 was sold in London yesterday for £496,500 sterling.
Before being rediscoverd earlier this year, Reverie, by Frank O'Meara, had last been shown in July 1888, after which it entered a French private collection.
The previous record for an O'Meara painting was set at Sotheby's exactly two years ago when an oil called Breton Woman was sold for £33,350.
Reverie was bought at yesterday's Irish art sale at Christie's by a London-based dealer.
The Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery in Dublin, which already owns five works by O'Meara, had been hoping to add the picture to its collection but could not afford to pay the price asked. Its director, Ms Barbara Dawson, confirmed after the sale: "We had been trying to buy Reverie but now we'd hope perhaps it might be donated to the gallery."
Top price at yesterday's auction was £573,000 for Sir William Orpen's 1916 self-portrait, Man of Aran.
The O'Meara price was one of a number of new records for Irish artists at auction established by yesterday's sale. The Bridge, a tempera-on-board painting by John Luke, fetched £441,500. Requiem for Dan O'Neill, by Colin Middleton, was sold for £40,000.
The Mock Funeral, a mid-19th century oil by William Willes, was sold for £45,500.
The total realised by Christie's at the sale of Irish art was £5,310,608, almost £450,000 more than the figure made at last year's event.
Today in London, Sotheby's holds its own Irish art sale, at which further high prices are expected to be paid.
Frank O'Meara spent almost all his professional life in France, which may explain why he has always been so little known in Ireland.
Born in Carlow and educated in that town and Dublin, O'Meara came from a medical family; his grandfather, Dr Barry O'Meara, had attended the deposed Napoleon on St Helena. In the early 1870s, O'Meara, like many other Irish painters of the period, travelled to France.
John Singer Sargent, who described O'Meara as "irresistible", painted his portrait in 1875, the year in which the Irish artist settled in the village of Grez-sur-Loing.
This was a favourite spot for many painters of the period; late last year at Christie's in London, a new world record for an Irish picture at auction was set when Sir John Lavery's On the Bridge at Grez was sold for £1,321,500.
One of the figures lounging on the bridge in this painting is said to be a portrait of O'Meara.
In the years before his death, he exhibited in Paris, London and Dublin. His finest pictures - including Reverie - share the same muted palette and air of romantic melancholy, a quality enhanced by titles such as Autumnal Sorrows and Twilight.