A rare landscape by Austrian artist Egon Schiele has fetched record 24,681,250 pounds (USD 40 million) at a Sotheby auction here.

The price of monumental work 'Hauser mit bunter Wasche Vorstadt II (Houses with colorful Laundry, Suburb II)' nearly doubles Schiele's previous auction record. His oil on canvas was sold for 13.9 million pounds.

The work, sold by the Leopold Museum in Vienna, was acquired by an anonymous telephone bidder last night at Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale. The landscape was painted in 1914, four years before Schiele's death.

The work set a new auction benchmark for the artist, but it fetched the lower end of the estimated price of between 22 million pounds and 30 million pounds.

Overall, the sale achieved a strong total of 96,968,000 pounds, well within the pre-sale estimate of 77 to 111 million pounds.

The sale saw an average lot value of 3.03 million pounds for the works sold, and achieved sell-through rates of 91.4 per cent by lot and 98.4 per cent by value.

Records were also set for Marc Chagall's Au-Dessus de la ville, which soared past the high estimate of 850,000 pounds to sell for 1,833,250 pounds setting a record for a work on paper by the artist.

Tamara de Lempicka's sensual La Dormeuse of 1930 sold for 4,073,250 pounds establishing a record for the artist at auction in US dollars.