Art lovers drove the price of a painting by the famous German artist Gerhard Richter to 2.1 million pounds (3 million dollars) Thursday night despite the world financial crisis.

Sotheby's auction house said the price was at the maximum of what it had estimated. It did not identify the buyer.

The 85-by-120-centimetre artwork, a misty landscape called Troisdorf, originated in 1985 and is considered one of the 76-year- old German artist's most impressive landscapes for his use of light.

Sotheby's highest price of the evening - 4.4 million pounds - was bid for the Italian painter Lucio Fontana's Concetto Spaziale. But that was far under the 7 million pounds Sotheby's had projected.