RECORD AT SOTHEBY’S: KLIMT’S PORTRAIT OF ELISABETH LEDERER SELLS FOR $236 MILLION
A historic auction shakes the art world. The achieved price breaks records and sparks global admiration.
A portrait by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt became the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction on Tuesday, fetching $236.4 million at Sotheby’s in New York, according to the auction house. The sale also marks a historic record for both Klimt and the New York institution.
The work, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, painted between 1914 and 1916, depicts the daughter of renowned Viennese patrons August and Serena Lederer, dressed in China-inspired attire against a blue tapestry with Asian motifs. The full-length painting, measuring 1.8 meters in height, survived Nazi confiscation and narrowly escaped destruction during World War II before being returned to the Lederer family in 1948.
The young subject, Elisabeth Lederer, saved her life during the Nazi occupation of Austria in 1938 by falsely claiming that Klimt, who had died in 1918, was her biological father. This convincing story allowed her to remain safe until her death from illness in 1944, according to records from Sotheby’s and the National Gallery of Canada, where the painting was previously on loan.
The portrait hung for nearly four decades in the Manhattan apartment of billionaire Leonard A. Lauder, heir to Estée Lauder, until his death in June at age 92. Before the auction, the piece started with an estimate of $130 million and quickly exceeded the initial expectation of $150 million, after a 20-minute bidding battle among six bidders. The buyer’s identity has not been disclosed.
The sale of the Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer not only sets a record for Klimt, surpassing the $108 million achieved by Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan) in 2023, but also makes Sotheby’s the auction house to achieve its highest price ever. It ranks only behind Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, sold in 2017 for $450.3 million.
During the auction, two other Klimt works also achieved notable figures: Blumenwiese (Blooming Meadow) sold for $86 million and Waldabhang bei Unterach am Attersee (Forest Slope in Unterach on the Attersee) for $68 million, both never before offered at auction. Overall, Sotheby’s raised $527 million from the sale of 24 pieces from the Lauder collection, including works by Edvard Munch, Henri Matisse, and Vincent van Gogh.
Helena Newman, Sotheby’s global head of Impressionist & Modern Art, highlighted that the portrait “is a work whose pictorial inventiveness, boldness, and decorative exuberance propelled the course of modernism” and called the sale “simply sensational.”
The portrait is not only a testament to the wealth and luxury of pre–World War II Vienna but also a historic piece reflecting the survival of a young Jewish woman during Nazi persecution, as well as the enduring artistic significance of Gustav Klimt.