Posted on 11/21/2025 1:58:19 PM PST by simpson96
The final tally of $236.4 million is the highest price for any work of modern art ever sold at auction and also set an auction record for the artist. Until Tuesday evening, that record had been held by Pablo Picasso’s 1955 Les Femmes d’Alger (“Version O”), which sold at Christie’s New York in 2015 for $179.4 million. The Klimt record also marks the most expensive artwork ever sold by Sotheby’s.
“Tonight, we made history at the Breuer,” Helena Newman, Sotheby’s worldwide chairman of Impressionist and modern Art and chairman of its European operations, said in a statement shortly after the lot sold. “To see Gustav Klimt’s exquisite portrait of Elisabeth Lederer set a new auction record for the artist is thrilling in itself; to see it become the most valuable work ever sold at Sotheby’s is nothing short of sensational. Klimt is one of those rare artists whose magic is as powerful as it is universal.”
The full-length portrait, one of only two such named Klimt commissions left in private hands, led the highly anticipated sale of the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, a 55-work trove valued at more than $400 million. Lauder acquired the painting in the mid-1980s from dealer Serge Sabarsky, adding to a collection that also included Cubist masterpieces, which he would later donate to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Proceeds from the sale will go to the Lauder trust.
Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer is widely considered one of Klimt’s most intricately conceived late portraits, begun when the artist was at the height of his powers and completed after nearly three years of revisions. Commissioned by the family that served as Klimt’s most important patrons, the work survived confiscation during the Nazi era and was restituted in 1948 before entering Lauder’s collection. Few Klimts ever surface publicly; fewer still carry the weight of this portrait.
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wouldn’t have paid a single $1 for it at a yard sale!
Why?
Modern Art is a strong competitor for the Oxyest of Oxymorons.
I unplug my nose and burst my pimples at ELISABETH Lederer.
I think this is what a DMT trip alien is supposed to look like....
Lol.
So I guess my bid of $4.25 wasn’t accepted.
Pure junk.
I am so glad women do not all look like that...
Makes me wonder if she ever got medical help.
(Yes I know she didn’t really look like that.)
Watch my sandwich 🥪🥪🥪
I sure would pass this art up at any sale at any price, but I suppose someone might think it was valuable. I guess “valuable” depends mostly on what somebody would pay for one of these painting. in my system of values, this might go for $.50
I think it’s one of the paintings stolen by the Nazis from the family that owned it.
I like the one of Adele Bloch-Bauer much better.
awwwww hPjeeeeezzzzz its so beautiful!💗
I love Klimts art and have several large printed on canvases in my home.
He also painted nature and I have one thats a tree & its grern.
In a way its light impressionism ? but how he pulls all things together is quite stunning.
I know he had what was called his “ gold period”
This is nowhere NEAR POLLACK
That “Rochefoucauld” is timeless!
L. Hartman’s Portrait of Private Lawrence Pyle was hailed as a modern art masterpiece.
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