IT is a charming portrait of three sisters that sold for just £4,000 in the 1970s.

But now this painting, created by Southampton’s greatest artist, has gone under the hammer again – fetching £2 million.

It is a new world auction record for a picture by Sir John Everett Millais.

The extraordinary price for the 1868 painting is even more remarkable for only 42 years ago – at Christie’s in London on July 2,1971 – the same picture sold for just £4,410.

The 42in square picture of Millais’ daughters, simply titled Sisters, came up for sale again at Christie’s in London, but this time it was snapped up by a mystery bidder for £2,301,875.

That smashed the previous world auction record for a Millais work – a record which had stood for 14 years – by about £210,000.

Before the auction, the world record for a Millais painting was £2,091,500, the sum paid at Christie’s in London on June 10, 1999, for an oil painting titled Sleeping.

Millais’ admirers include multimillionaire Evita and Phantom of the Opera composer Lord Lloyd Webber, 65, who once described Millais as “a Mozart of fine art”.

In fact Lord Lloyd Webber, who is said to be worth £620m, is such a Millais fan that he owns nine oil paintings by the artist.

Sir John Everett Millais – most famous for his painting Bubbles, which was used to advertise Pears Soap – was born in Portland Street, Southampton, on June 8, 1829, and was baptised at All Saints’ Church on December 27, 1829.

Millais Road, in Southampton, is named after him. He was in his late 30s when, in 1868, he painted Sisters, which features his three daughters Mary, Effie and Carrie.

Millais was 67 when he died on August 13, 1896, from throat cancer “almost certainly the result of pipe smoking”.

He was buried at St Paul’s Cathedral, London, next to Britain’s greatest artist, JMW Turner.