LONDON (AP) – A late-life masterpiece by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt sold on Tuesday for GBP85.3 million (USD108.4 million), making it the most expensive artwork ever auctioned in Europe.
Dame mit Fächer – Lady with a Fan – sold to a buyer in the room at Sotheby’s in London after a 10-minute bidding war for a hammer price of GBP74 million (USD94.35 million). The higher final figure includes a charge on top of the sale price known as the buyer’s premium.
The sale price well exceeded the presale estimate of GBP65 million, or USD80 million.
It also beat the previous European auction record of USD104.3 million – GBP65 million pounds at the time – including buyer’s premium paid for Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture Walking Man I at Sotheby’s in 2010. Previously, the most expensive painting auctioned in Europe was Claude Monet’s Le basin aux nymphéas, which fetched USD80.4 million at a Christie’s sale in 2008.
The piece sold on Tuesday was the last portrait Klimt completed before his death in 1918. The painting shows an unidentified woman against a resplendent, China-influenced backdrop of dragons and lotus blossoms.
It was last sold in 1994, going for USD11.6 million at an auction in New York.
Sotheby’s said the buyer was art adviser Patti Wong, acting on behalf of a Hong Kong collector.
Famed for his bold, daring art nouveau paintings, Klimt was a key figure in artistic modernism at the start of the 20th Century. His work has fetched some of the highest prices for any artist.
Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II sold at a New York auction in 2006 for USD87.9 million, and his landscape Birch Forest sold at Christie’s in New York last year for USD104.6 million.
Two more of his portraits are reported to have sold privately for more than USD100 million.
The world auction record for an artwork is the USD450.3 million paid in 2017 for Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi.
