A watershed moment for the November auctions arrived Monday night at Sotheby’s, where Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914–16) sold for a staggering $236.4 million after 20 minutes of intense bidding, per artnews.com.
The final price, which includes fees, not only eclipsed the artist’s previous auction record but instantly became the most valuable work of modern art ever sold at auction and the second most expensive artwork ever sold publicly.
The bidding war began at $130 million, culminating in a dramatic battle between two phone bidders, represented by Sotheby’s specialists David Galperin and Julian Dawes. The hammer ultimately fell to Dawes’s client at a $205 million hammer price. The salesroom erupted in applause, with Sotheby’s owner Patrick Drahi reportedly spotted grinning near the phone bank.
The final tally of $236.4 million sets an all-time auction record for Klimt. Until this sale, the record for modern art was held by Pablo Picasso’s 1955 Les Femmes d’Alger (“Version O”), which sold at Christie’s New York in 2015 for $179.4 million. The sale also marks the most expensive artwork ever sold by Sotheby’s, solidifying the house’s prestige.
“Tonight, we made history at the Breuer,” said Helena Newman, Sotheby’s worldwide chairman of Impressionist and modern Art. “To see Gustav Klimt’s exquisite portrait of Elisabeth Lederer set a new auction record for the artist is thrilling in itself; to see it become the most valuable work ever sold at Sotheby’s is nothing short of sensational.”
The full-length portrait, one of only two named Klimt commissions remaining in private hands, led the highly anticipated sale of the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, a 55-work trove valued at more than $400 million. Lauder acquired the painting in the mid-1980s from dealer Serge Sabarsky. Proceeds from the sale will go to the Lauder trust.
Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer is widely considered one of Klimt’s most intricately conceived late portraits, a work he revised over nearly three years. Commissioned by a family that was among Klimt’s most important patrons, the work survived confiscation during the Nazi era and was restituted in 1948 before entering Lauder’s hands.
Estimated in excess of $150 million, the painting was the crown jewel of the November auction season and confirms Klimt’s position as one of the few early-modern painters capable of commanding nine-figure prices in a volatile global market.
For Sotheby’s, the result marks a high-profile victory in a season overshadowed by geopolitical uncertainty and a shrinking pool of top consignments. The sale also inaugurated the auction house’s new headquarters in the refurbished Breuer Building.
The most expensive artwork ever sold at auction remains Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which fetched $450 million at Christie’s in 2017. Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer now takes second place, surpassing Picasso’s Women of Algiers.
•Featured image: Gustav Klimt, Porträt der Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer)/Sotheby’s
