Sean “Diddy” Combs, the rapper, has been identified as the buyer of a painting by Kerry James Marshall that sold at auction for a record-breaking $21.1m (£15.6m).
It was thought to be the most ever paid for a work by a living African-American artist when it went under the hammer on Wednesday night.
The imposing painting, Past Times – which shows black Americans picnicking in a Chicago park and measures four metres wide – had been estimated to fetch about $8m.
Instead a mystery bidder paid more than four times the previous record for a work by Marshall, setting off intense speculation about the buyer’s identity.
That was settled on Friday when Jack Shainman, Marshall’s gallerist and art dealer, confirmed the owner’s identity.
