Overview
- The 1914–16 Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer sold to an anonymous buyer on the phone with Julian Dawes after roughly 20 minutes of bidding that opened at $130 million and hammered at $205 million before fees.
- The price set multiple benchmarks, including the highest auction result for Klimt, the most ever paid for a modern artwork at auction, Sotheby’s priciest lot to date, and the second-highest painting ever sold at auction behind Salvator Mundi.
- Sotheby’s highlighted the painting’s rarity as one of only two full-length commissioned Klimt portraits remaining in private hands.
- The portrait was seized during the Nazi era and restituted to the Lederer family in 1948 before entering Leonard A. Lauder’s collection via dealer Serge Sabarsky in the mid-1980s.
- The sale led Sotheby’s inaugural evening at its Breuer headquarters and anchored the 24-lot Leonard A. Lauder Collection auction, which totaled $527.5 million, with proceeds designated for the Lauder trust.