A rare portrait of one of Pablo Picasso’s mistresses has become the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction after going under the hammer for $95.2 million (£52 million) in New York.

Dora Maar With Cat, painted in 1941, almost doubled its pre-sale estimate and was not far from the world record for an artwork at auction set by another Picasso in 2004, when his Boy with a Pipe fetched $104 million.

Described by auctioneer's Sotheby’s as one of the artist’s most spectacular depictions of his lover and muse, the 3ft by 4ft painting of Maar gives her terrifying talon-like fingernails and the rearranged facial features typical of Picasso. It shows her seated in a chair with a cat on the back.

Picasso's relationship with Maar, a surrealist photographer, was one of intellectual exchange and intense passion. She spoke Picasso’s native Spanish and shared his political concerns, even assisting with the execution of his monumental mural Guernica.

The painting was sold to an unidentified buyer who sat at the back of the salesroom and beat several phone bidders to the prize in an auction of impressionist and modernist art which made more than $200 million.

The winning bid of $95,216,000 dollars, including buyer's premium, for the Picasso comes just a day after his portrayal of his Russian ballerina wife Olga Khokhlova fetched $34,736,000 in New York at rival Christie’s.

"I was hoping for 70-plus," said David Norman, Sotheby’s co-chair of Impressionist and modern art, after the sale."We thought it was worth more, and we were right."

Even Tobias Meyer, the usually unflappable auctioneer, admitted that he was surprised when the bidding passed $65 million.

"The energy in the room was incredible," he said. "There’s just a very clear, strong demand for the kind of intense painting with an emotional pull that the Picasso represents; things that are made for our times."