'Bea Arthur Nude': How Much Did Naked 'Golden Girl' Portrait Sell For?

A naked portrait of late actress Bea Arthur sold for $1.9 million at Christie's auction house in New York City on Wednesday. The nude Bea Arthur portrait was created by artist John Currin in 1991.

The art piece, simply titled "Bea Arthur Nude," was an image of Arthur topless from the waist up. Unlike Leonardo DiCaprio's "Jack Dawson" in "Titanic," Currin reportedly did not have an actual naked subject when he created his piece. Using just a photograph of Bea Arthur, fully clothed, he drew what he imagined her to look like naked.

The oil painting of Bea Arthur was only one of many "post-war and contemporary" art pieces auctioned off on Wednesday at Christie's.

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The painting of Bea Arthur, who passed away in 2009 at age 86, was only one of over 70 paintings that fetched $495 million total in one sitting at the famous auction house. A self-portrait by artist Andy Warhol went for $5.2 million, and a drip painting by 20^th Century artist Jackson Pollack sold for over $58 million.

Bea Arthur herself is best remembered as Dorothy Zbornak on the 1980s sitcom "The Golden Girls," as well as being the titular character on "Maude" after reportedly impressing the producers of "All in the Family" when she first played Edith Bunker's liberal feminist cousin, an instant foil to Archie.

According to the Daily Beast's report on the incident, Facebook later apologized and said through a spokesman that "the image was erroneously removed" under the site's obscenity policy, remarking that it was a credit to Currin's "hyperrealism" that they believed the piece to be an actual photograph of Bea Arthur.