Overview
- The 1914–16 full-length portrait became the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction, behind Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi.
- After roughly 20 minutes of bidding, an anonymous phone buyer represented by Sotheby’s Julian Dawes won the lot at a $205 million hammer.
- The work, one of only two full-length Klimt commissions still privately owned, carries Nazi-era seizure history and 1948 restitution to the Lederer family before Lauder’s 1985 acquisition.
- Twenty-four lots from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection realized about $527.5 million in a white-glove evening, with two Klimt landscapes selling for $86 million and about $68 million.
- Sotheby’s touted the result as a boost to confidence at the top of the market during its inaugural marquee sale at the refurbished Breuer Building.