Costly painting

New York, Nov. 2 (Reuters): It was a big night for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Christie’s, when the auction house sold the artist’s painting of a laundress for a record-smashing $22,416,000 yesterday.

The Laundress, the most expensive painting of the annual autumn art auctions at Christie’s and rival Sotheby’s, also achieved the highest price at the first of two weeks of critical sales.

The moving portrait of a local woman gazing out a window from 1886-87 easily eclipsed the old record for Toulouse-Lautrec of $14,522,500, set in 1997.

Star break

Los Angeles (Reuters): A homeless man who broke into actress Jennifer Aniston’s rented Malibu house was sentenced to a year in jail on Tuesday and ordered to undergo psychological counseling. David Hesterbey, 49, took a $250 cab ride from Santa Barbara to Malibu in August, climbed over a 2.7 metre-high fence and entered Aniston’s house where he was confronted by her staff. The former Friends star was away filming in Chicago at the time and was not in court on Tuesday. Hesterbey pleaded no contest to a burglary charge and was ordered to stay away from the actor for 10 years.

Lost & real

Los Angeles (Reuters): The ABC television network and sister publishing label Hyperion Books are taking the concept of product placement into a new direction ? by turning an imaginary product into a real one. Producers of ABC’s mega-hit castaway thriller Lost plan to introduce a new storyline centreing on the discovery of a fictitious manuscript that will become the basis for a real-life novel that Hyperion will publish this spring.