Update, 6/27/23: Gustav Klimt's "Lady with a Fan" sold for $108.4 million, breaking the record for the most expensive piece of art, and most expensive painting, ever sold in Europe.
The last portrait Gustav Klimt ever painted, "Dame mit Fächer" (which translates to "Lady with a Fan") will go up for auction by Sotheby's at the end of the month.
With an estimated price of $80 million, it could very well become the most expensive painting ever sold in Europe. The most expensive artworks auctioned in Europe include "Walking Man I" by Alberto Giacometti for $104.3 million in February 2010, the record for any work of art sold at auction in Europe, and "Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas" by Claude Monet for $80.4 million in June 2008, which currently holds the record for any painting sold at auction in Europe.
Previous Klimt paintings have fetched high prices at auction, including "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II" (above) for $87.9 million in 2006 and "Birch Forest" for $104.6 million last year (as part of the sale of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's art collection.)
"Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan) is the last portrait Gustav Klimt created before his untimely death, when still in his artistic prime and producing some of his most accomplished and experimental works," Helena Newman, Chairman of Sotheby's Europe and Worldwide Head of Impressionist & Modern Art, said in a statement. Many of those works, certainly the portraits for which he is best known, were commissions. This, though, is something completely different - a technical tour de force, full of boundary-pushing experimentation, as well as a heartfelt ode to absolute beauty."
The painting was still on an easel in Klimt's studio at the time of his death in February 1918. The woman in the painting is unknown, but it could be Johanna Staude, one of Klimt's models.
Following Klimt's death, Viennese industrialist Erwin Böhler acquired the painting, and upon his death, it went to his brother, Heinrich Böhler, then Heinrich's wife Mabel. By 1967, it was owned by Austrian collector Rudolph Leopold.
"Lady with a Fan" was previously auctioned by Sotheby's in 1994, for $11.6 million. Per the auction house, only a small number of Klimt portraits are still privately owned, and "the appearance of this major work at auction marks an important moment for the market: not only is the painting the most valuable ever to have been offered at auction in Europe, it also now joins the ranks of the most valuable portraits – of any era – ever to have come to auction."
Lady with a Fan by Gustav Klimt will be offered in Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Evening Auction in London on June 27, 2023.
Emily Burack (she/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram.
