Gerard Sekoto's "The Milkman," via Sotheby's

Gerard Sekoto’s 1945-47 painting “The Milkman”  sold for $542,500 at Sotheby’s in New York, blasting by a $150,000 high estimate. The price is a record for the South African artist at auction.

The buyer was an unidentified South African private collector.

The work was sold during a workhorse mid-season Impressionist and Modern art sale filled with pleasant innocuous Louis Valtat florals and George D’Espagnat landscapes. The Oct. 6 sale tallied a resilient $4.2 million. Seventy-four percent of lots found takers.

This total was down from the $6.4 million achieved a year ago, but equal to the 2007 tally at the height of the market.

Sekoto, who died in 1993, is celebrated for his images of South African life.  He left his homeland in 1947, moving to Paris where he lived for the remainder of his life.