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LONDON, England (CNN) — A picture of an overweight woman lying naked on a couch, painted by British artist Lucian Freud, set a record Tuesday night for the most money paid for a painting by a living artist.

The 1995 life-size work, “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping,” fetched $33.6 million during bidding at Christie’s auction house in New York. The previous record was for “Hanging Heart,” a painting by Jeff Koonz that sold for $23.5 million, said Rik Pike, a spokesman for Christie’s.

“Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” depicts Sue Tilley, a manager of a government-run job center in London, lying on her side on a worn-out couch with nothing to hide her folds of flesh.

Christie’s calls it a “bold and imposing example of the stark power of Lucian Freud’s realism,” depicting “the forceful and undeniable physical presence of people and things.”

Tilley, 51, said she was initially embarrassed to pose naked for the artist, but they soon grew comfortable in the studio — so comfortable, in fact, that she confessed to falling asleep while posing.

“I didn’t mind if he noticed,” she said.

The painting challenges modern notions of beauty and elicits a reaction from everyone who sees it. That may have been precisely the aim of Freud, who told London’s Tate Gallery in 2002 that he wanted his paintings to “astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.”….

Collectors may also view this as a rare chance to buy something by a prolific artist painted at the peak of his work, he said.

Freud, 85, has been described as Britain’s greatest living realist painter. He is the grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and came to London from Germany when he was a child.

Source: edition.cnn.com/