Joaquín Sorolla's 'Las Tres Velas' (The Three Sails), which the Valencian artist painted in 1903, was sold at Sotheby's New York auction house earlier today for four and a half million US dollars (around €3,000 euros), earning a tidy profit for the American collector who acquired it in November 2004 at Sotheby's in London for $3.8 million.

It is the second highest price ever paid for a Sorolla whose 'La hora del baño' (Bath time (1904)) fetched €5.3 million euros last year.

The last time 'Las Tres Velas' was displayed publicly was in Berlin in 1904 when it was bought by the Steinhal family of Jewish bankers whose art collection was later seized by the German government during Hitler's Nazi regime.

The lost masterpiece was discovered, along with the rest of the Steinhal collection, in 2002 in the basement of the Gemaldegalerie museum in Dresden, and returned to the family two years later.