A PAINTING owned by the Castle Howard estate has fetched more than £10m at auction.

The painting of Omai (pictured) by Sir Joshua Reynolds, which depicts an 18th century Tahitian native, was sold to London-based art dealer Guy Morrison.

Dramatic bidding between Mr Morrison and another millionaire art collector at Sotheby's forced the price up to £2m more than the estimated value.

A spokeswoman from Castle Howard said Simon Howard was "delighted" with the sale.

"This is excellent news - we didn't expect it to fetch this amount," said the spokeswoman.

A spokeswoman from Sotheby's said the drama unfolded when two art dealers went head to head.

"We had expected it to be sold for anything from £6-8m," she said. "In the end it came down to two art dealers attempting to outbid each other. It was quite exciting - the final figure bid was £10,343,500. There was quite strong bidding between two people - both of them instructing people in the auction room via mobile phones. In the end, one person was successful."

Simon Howard instructed Sotheby's to sell the portrait as the culmination of a series of planned sales for tax reasons.

"We will be sad to lose the painting but we hope it will be put on display somewhere it can be seen by a far wider audience than at Castle Howard."

Updated: 09:39 Thursday, December 06, 2001