The three-metre wide steel cabinet is one of a series of four

A private bidder paid almost three times the estimate at Sotheby's for Lullaby Spring, which contains 6,136 individually painted pills.

Hirst succeeds US artist Jasper Johns, whose Figure 4 sold for $17.4m (£8.7m).

But Johns is still the world's most expensive living artist, after his work was bought privately for $80m (£40m).

Expensive week

Francis Bacon's Self Portrait, from 1978, was sold to a private bidder

The latest sale follows hot on the heels of a series of impressive price tags fetched at art auctions in London this week.

Lucian Freud held the title of Europe's most expensive living artist for just 24 hours after a 1992 portrait of his friend Bruce Bernard sold for £7.8m at auction on Wednesday.

The day before, one of Claude Monet's water lily paintings, Nympheas, sold for £18.5 million at Sotheby's, having been expected to fetch around £15 million.

But the canvas, which had not been seen in public since 1936, failed to break the artist's auction record of £19.8m, set in 1998.

The Contemporary Art Sale at Sotheby's on Thursday also saw a 1978 self-portrait by Francis Bacon sell for £21.5m, nearly double the maximum expected price of £12m.

Several works were sold in aid of the children's charity NSPCC, including a neon sign by Tracey Emin, a spin painting with butterflies by Hirst and works by Turner Prize winners Grayson Perry and Keith Tyson.

In total, the Sotheby's sale, which also included works by Andy Warhol and Mark Rothko, raised £72m, compared to an estimated total of £57m.

Art experts estimate that this week's auctions could have generated almost £500m.