A portrait by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt has been sold for £85.3m ($108.7m), setting a new record for any work of art sold at auction in Europe.
Lady With A Fan – described as a “technical tour de force” – was still on an easel in Klimt’s studio in Vienna when he
died in February 1918.
It was sold to a buyer in the room at Sotheby’s in London after a 10-minute bidding war for a hammer price of £74m, well exceeding the presale estimate of £65m.
The total price includes auction fees known as the buyer’s premium.
Auctioneer Helena Newman, Sotheby’s head of impressionist and modern art, went through the final bids in half-million pound increments.
Sotheby’s said the buyer was art adviser Patti Wong, acting on behalf of a Hong Kong collector.
The previous record for any work of art sold in Europe was set by Alberto Giacometti’s bronze statue Walking Man I, which went for $104.3m (£82m) in 2010.
The top price for a painting was $80.4m (£63m), paid for Claude Monet’s Le Bassin Aux Nympheas in 2008.
Ms Newman said Lady With A Fan is a “technical tour de force, full of boundary-pushing experimentation, as well as a heartfelt ode to absolute beauty”.
She noted: “It was created when he was still in his artistic prime and brings together all the technical prowess and creative exuberance that define his greatest work.”
It was last sold in 1994, fetching $11.6m (£9m) at an auction in New York.
The artist died at the age of 55 after suffering a stroke and pneumonia caused by the flu pandemic of 1918.
