A pencil portrait by renowned Russian avant-garde artist Yury Annenkov has set a record at Sotheby’s annual Russian Art Sale having fetched $1.6 million, 20 times the estimate. The portrait was the most expensive lot of the auction.

Sotheby’s was auctioning the collection ofRussian-born Hollywood composer Dmitry Tiomkin. He was close with both the artist Yury Annenkov and the subject of the record-setting artwork, theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold. He also had opera legend Fyodor Chaliapin, poets Vladimir Mayakovsky and Aleksandr Blok among his personal friends, along with many other important figures of the Russian avant-garde movement.

The 1922 drawing of Vsevolod Meyerhold comes from a series of Seventeen Portraits by Yury Annenkov, who perfected his style in portraiture. It was estimated to fetch between $32,000 and $80,000. The lot eventually sold for $1.6 million becoming the most expensive artwork in the sale.

Vladimir Weisberg’s 1973 drawing Reclining Nude tripled expert expectations. Initially estimated to sell for between $64,000 and $110,000 it eventually fetched $366,000.

The auction held in London on November 27 fetched a total of almost $9 million in the sale.

Tiomkin worked with such masters of US cinema as Frank Capra and Alfred Hitchcock. The composer went on to become one of Hollywood’s most decorated composers. He scooped 22 Academy Award nominations and won 4 Oscars for, among others, his scores for High Noon (1952) and The Old Man and the Sea (1958).

Yury Annenkov was a Russian avant-garde artist best known for his book illustrations and graphic portraits. He ended his life in Paris in 1974.