A portrait by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, has been sold for $236.4m (£179m) by Sotheby’s in New York, making it the second most expensive piece ever sold at auction. The buyer’s identity has not been disclosed.
There was a 20-minute bidding battle for the painting which was produced 1914 and 1916. After being looted by the Nazis and almost destroyed by fire during the Second World War, it was rescued in 1948 and returned to Elisabeth Lederer’s family. Her brother, Erich, was a friend and subject of Klimt’s contemporary, Egon Schiele.
The Nazis, who annexed Austria in 1938, looted the Lederer art collection but left family portraits behind, says the National Gallery of Canada. Sotheby’s says that the piece remained in Erich Lederer’s possession for most of his life until he sold it in 1983.
The painting shows Lederer, an heiress and daughter of one of Klimt’s patrons August Lederer, wearing a white robe and standing in front of a blue tapestry covered in Asian motifs. It was bought in 1985 by Estée Lauder heir Leonard A Lauder, who kept it in his private collection in his Fifth Avenue home in New York.
Expensive
Sotheby’s sale of the collection of Leonard Lauder exceeded expectations – the Lederer portrait had been given an estimate of $150m. Several other works by Klimt from Lauder’s collection were auctioned at the same time, including Flowering Meadow and Forest Slope at Unterach am Attersee, fetching between $60m and $80m each. Before this the highest sale for a Klimt on record was for Lady with a Fan, his final work, which sold for $108.8m in 2023 at Sotheby’s in London.
Sotheby’s Lauder auction also saw the sale of a 101kg sculpture of a fully functioning gold toilet by conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan achieving just one bid of $12.1m, according to Sotheby’s from a famous American brand, later revealed to be Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.
The first version of the work was initially installed in a public bathroom at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2016, but hit the news again three years later when thieves stole it from Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. The existence of a second casting of the golden toilet was revealed later.
The most expensive artwork ever sold at auction remains Salvator Mundi, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which sold in 2017 at Christie’s for $450.3m.
