Roy Lichtenstein's Sleeping Girl took joint top spot at Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York on May 9, with a $44.9m showing.

In the process it set a new record for a work by the US pop artist.

Roy Lichtenstein’s Sleeping Girl sold for $44.9m

The previous record was held by I Can See the Whole Room! ... and There's Nobody in it! It had sold for $43.2m at Christie's in November, corresponding to a 3.9% rise in just seven months.

Sleeping Girl, produced in 1964, had resided in the collection of Phil and Beatrice Gersh since that year, when they bought it from the famed Ferus gallery in Los Angeles.

The work vied with Francis Bacon's Figure Writing Reflected in Mirror for most valuable lot at the auction. It too sold for $44.9m.

The auction also featured the $37.0m sale of Andy Warhol's Double Elvis [Ferus Type].

The sale made $266.6m in all, doubling the $128m achieved at the corresponding auction in 2011.

The figures are further confirmation of what many art buyers will already tell you, that the top end of the sector is performing superbly well.

Just last week Edvard Munch's The Scream set a new art auction world record of $119.9m.

This investment-grade piece by Salvador Dali is featuring in PFC Auctions online auction, which runs until May 24.