The art world shook on May 11th when apainting by Pablo Picasso was sold for $179m at a Christie's sale in New York to anunidentified bidder—the highest sum ever paid for an artwork at auction. But aSot eby's auction on May 5th, also in New York, caused a bigger tremor At thatsale, bidders from mainland Ch ina agreed to pay a combined total of $116m for works by Vincent van Gogh, ClaudeMonet and another by asso. It was striking evidence of China emerging as anew source of demand for the European masters, and fits buyers' willingnessto bid handsomely.

Two of the successful bidders at Sotheby'swere movie moguls: Wang Zhongjun, the chairman of Huayi Bro rs Media, one ofChina's largest film companies, who took Picasso's "Femme au Chignon dans unFauteuil" f $29.9m; andWang Jianlin, the chairman of Dalian Wanda, a property conglomerate, who boughtMonet's "B n aux Nymphos, les Rosiers" for $20.4m. Mr Wang was recently named as Asia's richestman by Forbes ma ne. He already has dozens of European works andmore than 1,000 Chinese ones. Guo Qingxiang, who advis im on his artpurchases, says the Wanda boss plans to exhibit the Western collection when itis large enoug

The number of mainland Chinese bidding fornon-Chinese art at Sotheby's auctions doubled from 2010 to 2014: some 650 ofthem paid a total of more than $410mfor non-Chinese pieces from Sotheby's during that period. But Mr Guo is notalone in saying that Chinese buyers are sometimes unsophisticated. If sottovoce sniping is any measure of the maturity of an art market, maybe Chinahas already arrived.