Free Republic

Gustav Klimt’s ‘Dame mit Fächer’ (‘Lady with a Fan’) has sold for a record-breaking £85.3m ($108.m, €99.2m) at Sotheby’s. The sale marked the highest price ever paid for an artwork at a European auction. Making its first appearance on the market in 29 years, the piece exceeded pre-sale expectations of £65m. The final bid was placed by Patti Wong, founder of Patti Wong & Associates, who was representing a Hong Kong collector. The previous record for an artwork sold in Europe was £65m for Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture ‘L’homme qui marche I’ (‘The Walking Man I’), sold at Sotheby’s London in...

Sotheby’s will auction the last portrait by Gustav Klimt, the 1917 painting Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan), with the expectation that it will sell for over £65 million ($80 million), a record estimate for a painting in the United Kingdom and Europe. The auction house is promoting the painting, which previously sold at Sotheby’s in New York in 1994 for $11.6 million with fees, as “the star of the summer auction season in London” as well as “one of the finest and most valuable works of art ever to be offered in Europe.” It will head to sale...