Gustav Klimt’s six-foot-tall Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-16) bought for $205m ($236.3m with charges) at its public sale debut at Sotheby’s New York on Tuesday night time (18 November).
After an almost 20-minute bidding struggle that proceeded at occasions in increments of $5m and sprang again to life after a number of “honest warnings” from auctioneer Oliver Barker, the portray in the end went to a bidder on the telephone with Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s vice chairman and head of Impressionist and fashionable artwork. The crowded room at Sotheby’s new headquarters within the former Whitney Museum of Fashionable Artwork constructing on Madison Avenue erupted with applause after Dawes’s bidder outdueled 4 different telephone bidders and one lady seated in one of many entrance rows.
Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer is the second-most useful murals ever bought at public sale, surpassing Andy Warhol’s Sage Shot Blue Marilyn (1964) that bought for $195m with charges at Christie’s New York in 2022. The portray can also be essentially the most useful work ever bought by Sotheby’s. Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer additionally broke Klimt’s public sale report, surpassing Dame mit Fächer (Woman with Fan, 1917), which bought for £85.3m (with charges) at Sotheby’s in London in 2023.
Gustav Klimt’s Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, 1914-16) got here to market with an on-request estimate $150m (estimates are calculated with out charges) and in the end bought for a hammer value of $205m ($236.3m with charges) Courtesy Sotheby’s
The highest lot of the standalone sale of works from the gathering of the late billionaire cosmetics inheritor Leonard A. Lauder, it hung in Lauder’s residence for many years earlier than a long-term mortgage to the Nationwide Gallery of Canada that ended earlier this yr.
Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer got here to market with an on-request estimate of greater than $150m. It was backed by a assure and irrevocable bids, guaranteeing it will obtain a report outcome. It is among the final main full-length portraits by Klimt nonetheless in non-public fingers.
The portray reveals 20-year-old Elisabeth Lederer, the daughter of Jewish industrial magnate August Lederer, wearing a flowing gown and posed in entrance of an East Asian art-influenced backdrop. Lederer and his spouse, Serena, have been Klimt’s most necessary collectors. So shut have been the Lederers to Klimt that Elisabeth was capable of escape Nazi persecution through the invasion of Austria by claiming Klimt was her organic father. Elisabeth’s portrait was seized by Nazis in 1939 and returned to the household after the Second World Conflict. It has been in Lauder’s assortment for the reason that Nineteen Eighties.
This story will probably be up to date with a full report from the night time’s gross sales at Sotheby’s.
