Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's nude artwork sold

London, (ANI): A Dali watercolour of a reclining nude that had been hanging in the bedroom of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner has been sold for more than 266,000 dollars at an auction in New York.

The work, which was expected to fetch not more than 150,000 dollars, was among the 125 artworks the magazine offered at Christie's a couple of days ago, reports the BBC. It was sold to an anonymous buyer for 266,500 dollars.

The Dali watercolour was part of a 1967 issue that asked artists to create art inspired by Playboy''s 'Playmate" models. Yet Aaron Baker, curator of the Playboy Art Collection, still called it a great example of his work 'from his best period".

Nearly all the items up for grabs had appeared in the magazine, first published in 1953. The sale included 80 photographs and 24 cartoons.

According to Baker, the sale represented a fraction of Playboy's archive of 5,000 contemporary works and more than 20 million photographs. Mouth No. 8, a 1966 oil painting of a scarlet-lipstick mouth by pop artist Tom Wesselmann, fetched 1.9m dollars.

Wesselmann's work, part of a series the artist began in 1965, sold for slightly less than expected.