Elephant de Triomphe, a sculpture by Salvador Dali, made £446,500 ($728,554) at Bonhams' impressionist and modern art sale in London on February 4 - a new world record for a bronze by the artist.

The piece was valued at £350,000 ($570,000) ahead of the auction, equating to a 33.2% increase.

Elephant de Triomphe is now the world's most valuable Dali bronze

Executed in 1984 and numbered four of eight, the work consists of an elongated elephant ridden by a golden trumpeter.

Elephants are a recurrent theme in Dali's work, and are often interpreted as symbols of the future, with their spindly legs suggesting the tenuous nature of progress.  

The record price for a work by Dali at auction is held by a painting of Paul Eluard, the French surrealist poet, which achieved £13.4m ($21.5m) in 2011.

Joan Miro's Femme, etoile (1978) made £212,500 ($346,736), towards the higher end of its £180,000-220,000 ($300,000-360,000) estimate.

The painting dates to the end of Miro's career and shows a break with the artist's earlier works, which were highly ordered, towards a style influenced by abstract expressionism.

A number of important art auctions took place in London on February 4, most notably at Christie's where an Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale set a new record for the artist Juan Gris.  

Christie's Art of the Surreal auction took place the same evening and featured an important early painting by Rene Magritte.

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