Collector pays $34.8m for painter's late artwork

A huge ink-and-color work of master painter Zhang Daqian (1899-1983) fetched HK$270 million ($34.8 million) at a Hong Kong auction on Tuesday, setting an auction record for the artist.

Peach Blossom Spring, a hanging-scroll landscape that Zhang made a year before his death, aroused a heated bidding war in the salesroom of Sotheby's major spring auction.

It finally went to Liu Yiqian, a billionaire collector from Shanghai who made headlines last year for spending $170 million on Amedeo Modigliani's Nu Couche ("Reclining Nude") in a New York auction.