Gustav Klimt’s six-foot-tall Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-16) sold for $205m ($236.3m with fees) at its auction debut at Sotheby’s New York on Tuesday night (18 November).
After a nearly 20-minute bidding war that proceeded at times in increments of $5m and sprang back to life after several “fair warnings” from auctioneer Oliver Barker, the painting ultimately went to a bidder on the phone with Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s vice chairman and head of Impressionist and modern art. The crowded room at Sotheby’s new headquarters in the former Whitney Museum of Modern Art building on Madison Avenue erupted with applause after Dawes’s bidder outdueled four other phone bidders and one woman seated in one of the front rows.
Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer is the second-most valuable work of art ever sold at auction, surpassing Andy Warhol’s Sage Shot Blue Marilyn (1964) that sold for $195m with fees at Christie’s New York in 2022. The painting is also the most valuable work ever sold by Sotheby’s. Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer also broke Klimt’s auction record, surpassing Dame mit Fächer (Lady with Fan, 1917), which sold for £85.3m (with fees) at Sotheby’s in London in 2023.
The top lot of the standalone sale of works from the collection of the late billionaire cosmetics heir Leonard A. Lauder, it hung in Lauder’s home for decades before a long-term loan to the National Gallery of Canada that ended earlier this year.
Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer came to market with an on-request estimate of more than $150m. It was backed by a guarantee and irrevocable bids, ensuring it would achieve a record result. It is one of the last major full-length portraits by Klimt still in private hands.
The painting shows 20-year-old Elisabeth Lederer, the daughter of Jewish industrial magnate August Lederer, dressed in a flowing robe and posed in front of an East Asian art-influenced backdrop. Lederer and his wife, Serena, were Klimt’s most important collectors. So close were the Lederers to Klimt that Elisabeth was able to escape Nazi persecution during the invasion of Austria by claiming Klimt was her biological father. Elisabeth’s portrait was seized by Nazis in 1939 and returned to the family after the Second World War. It has been in Lauder’s collection since the 1980s.
This story will be updated with a full report from the night’s sales at Sotheby’s.
