A storied Gustav Klimt painting sold for $236.4 million at Sotheby’s in New York on Tuesday night, setting a new auction record for the turn-of-the-20th-century Viennese artist. It is the most expensive work ever sold at Sotheby’s and the most expensive Modern artwork ever sold at auction.
Titled Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914), the work was estimated at $150 million and offered in an evening sale dedicated to material from the trove of Leonard Lauder, the great art patron who died in June at 92. While Lauder gave his unparalleled Cubist collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2013, he held on to other art treasures, including three Klimt paintings and six Henri Matisse bronzes. Two dozen of these works are being offered for sale this evening at Sotheby’s new global headquarters at the Breuer Building on Madison Avenue.
The building, which has a smaller footprint than Sotheby’s former home on York Avenue, was bursting at the seams with attendees. Champagne flowed. The sale was held on the fourth floor, with just 200 seats. The anticipation and excitement were intense.
The bidding lasted for about 20 minutes. The evening’s auctioneer, Oliver Barker, opened the action at $130 million, and the price climbed steadily by intervals of $2 million, then $5 million.
The fight slowed as the price approached $170 million, but eventually Sotheby’s staffer David Galperin came in at $171 million with a surprise bid. “You took your time, David,” Barker said. “Where have you been? Welcome to the party.”
And then a three-way battle was joined, with Galperin competing with a fellow Sotheby’s rainmaker on the phone, Julian Dawes, and in the room, advisor and former Sotheby’s exec Patti Wong, who eventually fell away. There were six bidders in total.
When the price reached $200 million, applause erupted. Dawes won soon after with a $205 million bid.
Sotheby’s guaranteed Lauder’s collection, leaving it on the hook for some $400 million, according to market sources. In the weeks leading up to the auction, it sought an investor willing to place irrevocable bids on the three Klimt paintings, jointly valued at $300 million. Just 10 hours before the auction, Sotheby’s online catalog didn’t have any symbols signifying that it had succeeded in finding third-party backers for the works. But by 9 a.m. they had appeared alongside all but six of the lower-value lots in the sale.
Lauder bought Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer in 1985 from the Serge Sabarsky Gallery in New York for an undisclosed amount, according to Sotheby’s provenance. The portrait depicts the daughter of the artist’s most important patrons, Serena and August Lederer. Klimt painted three portraits of three generations of Lederer women. Portrait of Serena Lederer (1899) is owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her daughter’s portrait, created 15 years later, is gentler and more mysterious, with Chinese imperial iconography in the background.
Source : Katya Kazakina