Famed screenwriter Norman Lear bought a David Hockney painting in 1978 for $64,000, and it's expected to fetch up to $35 million at auction.
Christie's auction house said 'A Lawn Being Sprinkled' will be auctioned off as part of a collection of works by Norman Lear and his wife, Lyn Davis Lear.
According to the auction house, Lear paid a record-breaking amount for a Hockney painting when he purchased it in 1978. But these days, the artist's most valued pieces fetch tens of millions of dollars.
The 1967 acrylic painting on canvas shows several sprinklers spraying a green lawn against the backdrop of a gray building and a fence.
The top draws in the collection includes pieces by Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, Willem de Kooning, and Ed Ruscha's 'Truth.'
Lear, who produced shows like 'All in the Family,' 'The Jeffersons,' and 'Good Times,' was referred to by some as "the most important television producer in history."
He passed away in December at the age of 101 at his Los Angeles home.
Max Carter, Christie's vice chairman of 20th and 21st-century Art, said the artworks that Norman and Lyn collected together is like his era-defining shows, marked as much by exploring ideas as by an exquisite sense of craft.
Hockney, 86, is one of the most well-known living artists in the world.
He was born in Bradford, Northern England. He spent several years painting some of his most well-known pieces in California after arriving in 1964.
Hockney's 1972 work, 'Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures),' was sold for $90.3 million in 2018. It broke the record held by Jeff Koons' 'Balloon Dog' for the highest amount ever paid at auction for a work by a living artist.
