A Sotheby's auction house employee talks on his mobile phone next to the sculpture "Le Penseur" (The thinker) by French artist Auguste Rodin during a preview of Sotheby's fall sales of impressionist and modern art in New York, on 02 November. A major sale of impressionist and modern art at Sotheby's in New York late on Wednesday fell far short of expectations, with works by several major artists failing to find buyers.(AFP/File/Emmanuel Dunand)

NEW YORK  - Hong Kong real estate tycoon Joseph Lau was named Wednesday as the buyer of the top lot at Sotheby's sale of impressionist and modern art in New York -- a painting by French artist Paul Gauguin.

Lau, a self-made billionaire and flamboyant socialite with an estimated fortune of 2.1 billion dollars, paid 39.2 million dollars for the painting "Te Poipoi" (The Morning), one of the post-impressionist's Tahitian works.

The painting, a depiction of a Tahitian woman bathing under mango trees, was sold at auction Wednesday and Lau later revealed as the buyer.

Last year Lau paid what was then a record for a work by pop artist Andy Warhol, when he bought a portrait of Mao Zedong for 17.4 million dollars.

No stranger to opulent living, Lau, 55, last year spent more than 40 million Hong Kong dollars (5.1 million US) on 20 personalized car licence plates, including "1 LOVE U," which fetched 1.4 million dollars.

And earlier this year Boeing announced that Lau had ordered one of its 787 "Dreamliner" planes -- normally configured to carry 250 to 300 passengers -- as a private jet in an order worth some 153 million dollars at list prices.

Considered something of a playboy, Lau has also been linked to several Hong Kong actresses and is also reported to have a collection of some 10,000 bottles of vintage red wine.

However, he also has a philanthropic side and has endowed scholarships at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Wealthy Asians are increasingly becoming high-profile players in the booming global art market, with Hong Kong having rapidly established itself as the world's third most important market after New York and London.