A work by Roy Lichtenstein has sold at auction for nearly $45m, a new record for the U.S. Pop Art icon, according to BBC News.

Sleeping Girl, from 1964, went for $44.9m (£27.8m) at Sotheby's New York sale of post-war and contemporary art.

The same sale saw Andy Warhol's Double Elvis, a life-sized silver silkscreen image of Elvis Presley depicted as a cowboy, fetch $37m (£23m).

The artwork, one of 22 Warhol dedicated to the famous singer, had been expected to sell for as much as $50m (£31m).

The sale came a day after another New York auction saw a 1961 painting by Mark Rothko set a new record for a contemporary artwork sold at auction.

Orange, red, yellow sold for $86.9m (£53.8m) at Christie's.

And last week, Sotheby's sold a version of Edvard Munch's The Scream for $119.9m (£74.3m), making it the most expensive artwork to go under the hammer.

Al Weiwei exhibited his sunflower seed exhibition in London in 2011.

May 9 sale also saw dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei sell a portion of his porcelain Sunflower Seeds installation for a record $782,500 (£484,919).

The lot comprised about a tenth of the 100 million seeds displayed at Tate Modern in 2011, where safety fears about ceramic dust saw them cordoned off from visitors.

A Francis Bacon work from 1976 went under the hammer as well, fetching almost as much as the Roy Lichtenstein canvas.

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Roy Lichtenstein’s “Sleeping Girl” fetches $44.9m