Klimt’s masterpiece breaks records

“Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer,” painted by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt between 1914 and 1916, fetched $236.4 million in New York, becoming the second most expensive work of art ever sold at auction.

Six bidders battled for 20 minutes for the piece, which depicts the daughter of Klimt’s chief patron dressed in a white imperial Chinese dress, standing in front of a blue wallpaper with Asian-inspired motifs. Sotheby’s, which handled the sale, did not identify the buyer.

The most expensive painting ever sold at auction remains “Salvator Mundi,” attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which was bought for $450 million in 2017.

“Complete society portraits of this impressive scale and from Klimt’s peak period (1912-17) are extremely rare; the majority in major museum collections,” Sotheby’s said of Tuesday’s sale. “The painting offered this evening was one of two such portraits commissioned from private individuals,” a statement added.

Several other Klimt works were auctioned at the same event, including “Flowering Meadow” for $86 million and “Forest Slope at Unterach am Attersee” for $68.3 million — both part of the collection of Estee Lauder cosmetics heir Leonard Lauder, who died earlier this year.

In total, 24 lots from the Lauder collection brought in $527.5 million. For Klimt, the previous auction record for his work was held by “Lady with a Fan,” which sold for 85.3 million pounds ($108.8 million) in London in 2023.

Another notable auction on Tuesday saw Italian provocateur Maurizio Cattelan’s toilet sell for $12.1 million and sold to a famous American brand, according to Sotheby’s.

An earlier version of the luxury toilet, titled ‘America’, was stolen in 2019 from a castle in England. Although it was never recovered – and was likely melted down for cash – three men were convicted in connection with the theft.

A self-portrait by Frida Kahlo has the chance to set a record for a female artist when it goes up for sale, also at Sotheby’s in New York. Estimated at $40 million to $60 million, the 1940 piece called “The Dream (The Bed)” shows the Mexican painter sleeping in a bed overshadowed by a large skeleton.

The most expensive painting by a female artist ever sold is a 1932 work by American Georgia O’Keeffe, which fetched $44.4 million in 2014. The record for Frida Kahlo is another 1949 self-portrait, “Diego and I,” which sold for $34.4 million in New York.