The auctioneer who sold a painting by a pupil of Charles Goldie for a record $12,000 says the politically incorrect subject matter of a Maori woman smoking a pipe may have added to its sales appeal.
Waatea News reports the painting - called Kapai Te Toriri (Tobacco is Good) - by Vera Cummings, fetched five times its expected price.
With the price of original Goldies doubling in the past five years, International Art Centre director Richard Thomson says collectors are jumping on what they see as the next best thing.
