Not only was the price, which comfortably exceeded the estimates of £9 million to £12 million, very different to Australia's last major Picasso donation in September 1959 when La Belle Hollandaise made £59,000.
From the nature of the gifts, the way they were given and even the auction house involved (Sotheby's sold the last donation) world has moved on.
The Sydney Sun of May 9, 1959 reported that great surprise had arisen in London when been La Belle Hollandaise, Picasso's 1905 portrait of a Dutch girl, had sold for £59,000.
No estimates were published in those day but the Sun said saleroom observers asked if there had been a gold rush in Australia, so high was the price.
The successful bidder was the Queensland Agent General in London, Mr D Muir, acting for the Queensland Art Gallery.
Mr Muir also bought three other French Impressionist paintings consigned by the colourful Queensland pastoralist and art patron Harold de Vahl Rubin.
The Major hinted before the sale to a Sotheby's porter, that he might contribute towards the gallery acquiring them. Rubin funded the gallery's purchases when payment became due.
The malicious hinted Rubin might even have had something to do with the exceptionally strong bidding.
It was not possible to make gifts in kind to public galleries and benefit from them to the full value of the gift – or more – when Rubin sold these works and gave them to the Queensland Art Gallery.
We now have the Cultural Gifts Program (CGP), the eulogistic name subsequently given to what in the 1970s was known and developed as the Taxation Incentives Scheme.
This program allows for the donation of gifts in kind to approved institutions at the average of two approved valuations.
The amount can be deducted from tax assessed.
Major Rubin was a character who enjoyed his highly colourful profile and was happy to boast that he had made a big profit on the sale of the Picasso.
He is now associated with what is possibly Australia's most important overseas painting.
A few mostly more modern paintings by Picasso have been acquired through purchase by Australian public galleries since, but nothing of this stature.
Jeune fille endormie which sold this week to an anonymous buyer and presumably has left Australia for good, was a lesser 1935 work than the full size portrait of the Dutch Girl which was executed at the height of Picasso's much loved Rose Period.
From the same period Picasso's Boy with a Pipe (The Young Apprentice) painted when the artist was just 24, became the most expensive painting ever sold at auction when an anonymous buyer purchased it for $US104.1 million last night at Sotheby's in New York.
So the Rubin gift and the gift to the university are very different pictures even if in real money their auction values were very much closer than they seem. .
The donation to the university, however, is richer in that unusually these days it was made anonymously.
Anonymity is traditionally regarded as one of the highest levels of giving. It was given to fund medical research
The donor, a descendant of the New York based collector who acquired it in the 1960s, sacrifices a lot of hubris in order to make the gift.
The donor is presumably now based in Sydney because the picture was according to the University packed and shipped from here.
Big efforts have been made unsuccessfully by the press to identify him or her.
The University of Sydney, however, has won significantly from the gesture and so too has the taxpayer as unlike other majority of other most contemporary donations now going through no reference has been made to the CGP.
The vendor has also won, if he or she has a big income, by the big gain in the value of the work: that is if advantage is taken of the CGP.
Sotheby's is still a very big competing force with Christie's in the Impressionist and modern picture market.
But in Australia it is now represented by a franchise rather than a representative office.
The Power Bequest, which established the university's art department, came into being in 1961 after Sotheby's sold Channel Island resident John Wardell Power's collection in London..
Jeune fille endormie, a portrait of Marie-Therese Walter was one of three portraits of lovers of Picasso which comprised the top three prices in Christie's London sale of Impressionist and Modern Art.
The evening session of the sale in which the portraits were offered grossed £140 million or 87 per cent by lot and 80 per cent by value suggesting the Greek and other financial crises may be helping the market not undermining it.
Christie's ceased auctioning in Australia five years ago because business in Australia was minimal compared with that promised by developing economies.
But little like Jeune fille endormie, had been turning up and would have been sold in London or New York anyway as there have not been any buyers in this price range since Alan Bond was spending in the 1980s.
