Munch's 'Vampire' to go up for auction

LONDON, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- Edvard Munch's "Vampire," a painting widely viewed as a companion to "The Scream," reportedly is expected to sell for about $35 million at a New York auction.

"Vampire" is to hit the auction block Nov. 3 at Sotheby's in New York. The 1894 work has been owned by a private collector for more than 70 years.

The BBC said that if the painting sells for at least as much as it is expected to, it would be the highest price paid for a Munch painting. His "Girls on a Bridge" sold for nearly $31 million last May.

"Vampire" is to go on display at Sotheby's auction houses in London and Moscow next month.

"Few paintings pack as hard a punch as Munch's 'Vampire,'" Simon Shaw, senior vice president and head of Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern Art Department in New York, told the BBC. "Like 'The Scream,' it distills extraordinarily intense feelings into a simple, unforgettable motif. The lovers, locked in their dark embrace, evoke love's paradox as a source of tenderness and pain."