Artist Gerald Laing’s painting of 60s icon Brigitte Bardot has sold for more than £900,000 at auction beating the asking price by £100,000.
It is the first time the pop art image has gone under the hammer since Mr Laing sold it to a friend for just £40 five decades ago.
The monochrome oil painting went on sale at Christie’s sale of post-war and contemporary art in London alongside works by high-profile artists such as Tracy Emin, Jeff Koons and Francis Bacon.
Auctioneers estimated it could fetch between £600,000 and £800,000 but the final price was £902,500.
Mr Laing painted the image of the famous French actress with a black circle framing her face for the A963 Young Contemporaries exhibition when he was a student at St Martin’s College of Art in London.
He later said he had acted “quite cheekily” in entering the painting as it was a replica of the logo used to advertise for submissions for the exhibition.
His son Farquhar Ogilvie-Laing, who runs the Black Isle Bronze foundry at Nairn, said the picture was an important part of his father’s legacy.
He said: “He always said that an artist doesn’t really know what his greatest works will be but I think in this case he did know that this was a very important painting and it has been featured in several large exhibitions over the years.”
Born in Newcastle in 1936, Mr Laing was taken on by a leading US gallery shortly before he graduated and was a contemporary of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.
He spent several years in the US and later moved to the Kinkell Castle on the Black Isle where he died aged 75 in 2011.
His most famous images include the Bardot painting and works featuring other stars such as Kate Moss and Amy Winehouse.
In his later years he turned to sculpture and created the Mercat Cross in Falcon Square, Inverness, as well as a bronze commemorating the Highland Clearances at Couper Park, Helmsdale, and a life-sized sculpture of a drover and a Highland bull at Dingwall Mart.
Four Rugby Players at Twickenham Stadium, Ten Dragons at London’s Bank Underground Station and The Glass Virgins at Standard Life’s building in Edinburgh are among his other notable works