Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914–16) sold for $236.4 million at Sotheby’s on November 18th, becoming the second most expensive painting ever sold at auction. The hammer fell after 20 minutes of bidding among six bidders during the inaugural sale at Sotheby’s new headquarters in New York, the Breuer Building. (All prices include fees).
Part of two Sotheby’s evening sales, the Klimt was featured among 24 lots from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection. This white glove sale brought in $527.5 million. The night continued with the Now & Contemporary sale, which brought in $178.5 million. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Peso Neto (1981) led the second sale, achieving $48.3 million, slightly above its $45 million high-estimate.
Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, a six-foot-tall painting, depicts Lederer, a young Austrian heiress and daughter of Klimt’s patrons, draped in a Chinese robe. The Nazis nearly confiscated the painting; however, it eventually returned to Erich Lederer, Elisabeth’s brother, in 1948. He first sold it in 1983 to a private collector. It entered American philanthropist Leonard A. Lauder’s collection in 1985 and hung in his house in New York. Lauder died on June 14th at 92. Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer is thought to be one of two full-length Klimt portraits in private hands, according to the New York Times.
Klimt’s previous auction record was set in 2023, when Dame mit Fächer (1917) sold for $108 million at Sotheby’s. Two other Klimt masterpieces were featured in the Sotheby’s sale, including Blumenwiese (Blooming Meadow) (ca. 1908), which sold for $86 million, and Waldabhang bei Unterach am Attersee (Forest Slope in Unterach on the Attersee) (1916), which sold for $68 million.
The most expensive painting sold at auction to date is Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (ca. 1500), which sold for $450.3 million at Christie’s in 2017. The Klimt portrait has now surpassed Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964), which sold for $195 million at Christie’s New York in May 2022.
One of the buzziest lots of the evening, Maurizio Cattelan’s solid golden toilet America (2016), sold for $12.1 million. Last month, Sotheby’s announced that it would put America, a functioning toilet made from 101.2 kilograms of solid gold, up for auction, with its price tied to its bullion value—a figure based on its precious metal content. The sale hammered at its $10 million opening bid, just slightly above the cost of the gold used to make it.
Several additional records were set throughout the evening, including those for Antonio Obá and Yu Nishimura. British painter Cecily Brown’s High Society (1997–98) sold for $9.8 million against its high estimate of $6 million. The artist’s previous record was set by Suddenly Last Summer (1999), which sold for a record-breaking $6.78 million at Sotheby’s New York in May 2018.
