Overview
- The price set new highs for Klimt and for Sotheby's and ranks second for any painting sold at auction after Leonardo's Salvator Mundi.
- Painted circa 1914–16, the work portrays Elisabeth Lederer, a figure tied to the Viennese cultural milieu and the Pulitzer-Lederer families.
- Bidding reportedly opened near $130 million and ran for about 20 minutes with six competing parties.
- The portrait was seized by the Nazis in 1940, later recovered by the family, and acquired in the 1980s by Leonard Lauder.
- Offered as the marquee lot from Lauder’s collection in New York, the painting was won by an undisclosed buyer.