TOKYO (Kyodo) -- A large hand-painted work by Japanese ukiyo-e artist Kitagawa Utamaro sold for HK$55.27 million ($7.1 million) to a Japanese private collector at an auction in Hong Kong over the weekend, a record auction price for a piece by the artist, Sotheby's said.

The early 19th-century painting, "Fukagawa in Snow," is part of Utamaro's renowned "Snow, Moon and Flowers" trilogy and had been in the collection of the Okada Museum of Art in Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture, the auction house said Tuesday.

Measuring about 2 meters high and 3.4 meters wide, the hanging scroll depicts 26 young women and a boy at a teahouse in Tokyo's Fukagawa district, some gazing at snow in a courtyard and others warming themselves by a brazier.

Utamaro, one of the most celebrated ukiyo-e artists of the Edo period, painted the work late in his life, before his death in 1806. After being exhibited shortly after World War II, the painting's whereabouts remained unknown for decades until it was rediscovered in Japan in 2012 and acquired by the museum.

The Saturday auction featured a total of 125 items from the museum's collection, including Katsushika Hokusai's celebrated woodblock print "The Great Wave off Kanagawa," which sold for HK$21.72 million, also to a Japanese collector. According to Sotheby's, this was the highest price ever paid for a Hokusai print.