LONDON - AN OIL sketch by 17th century Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens sold for a record 3.8 million pounds (S$11.1 million) at a Christie's auction in London on Thursday.

The work, Two Studies of a Young Man, depicts an unknown subject's head from the front and the side, and was painted between 1615 and 1617, establishing the highest-ever price for a Rubens oil sketch at auction.

Christie's had sold it before in 1934 for 1,560 pounds after a collector brought it that year to the auction house, where it was recognised as a Rubens.

The Rubens sale highlighted an Important Old Master and British Pictures auction that fetched a total of 18.8 million pounds.

'This evening's auction offered a diverse selection of European pictures,' Mr Richard Knight and Mr Paul Raison, Christie's international director of Old Master and British Pictures and Head of the Old Master and British Picture Department respectively, said in a statement.

'The market continues to show a great appetite for the most attractive and market-fresh works,' they said. -- AFP