European record broken: The painting ‘Lady with a Fan’ by Austria’s most famous painter Gustav Klimt sold in London on Tuesday for £74 million (almost C$125 million), beating estimates by Sotheby’s, the sale’s promoter.
The “Lady with a Fan”, a late work by the painter who died in 1918, has already dethroned the previous European record, which had been held since February 2010 by a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, “Man Who Walks I”, which was then sold for 65 million pounds at Sotheby’s.
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Sotheby’s, which organized the sale, had presented this work, one of the last paintings by Klimt (1862-1918), as “not only the star of the summer auction season in London, but also one of the finest and most precious ever offered in Europe”.
It suggested that after ten minutes of bidding and breathtaking suspense in the closing moments when two potential buyers were still in the running, it could sell for £65million, well below the price it finally achieved under the hammer.
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Once the costs associated with the sale are added in, the winner, whose identity will not be revealed, will have to pay £85.3 million (almost C$145 million).
Gustav Klimt had started painting in 1917, a year before his death in 1918 at the age of 55.
We see a dark-haired woman of unknown identity, dressed in a loose dress and bare-shouldered, holding a fan. Behind her we find patterns and colors that are common to the artist, such as blue and green birds, flowers on a golden yellow background.
According to Sotheby’s, the canvas has been in a private collection since 1994. It once belonged to the Viennese industrialist Erwin Böhler, then to his brother and until the 1940s his widow.
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Much later, in 1988, it also belonged to American businessman and patron Wendell Cherry.
“The touch of freedom and spontaneity (the portrait) reflects Klimt’s joy in painting it and celebrating beauty in its purest form,” according to the auction house.
Gustav Klimt also holds the world record in an auction. Last year, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912) sold at Christie’s in New York for US$104.5 million (almost CAN$140M).
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Other top sales in Europe included Claude Monet’s ‘The Water Lilies’ which sold at Christie’s in London in June 2008 for £40.9 million, while René Magritte’s ‘Empire of Light’ was sold at Sotheby’s in March 2022 for £59, Sold for £4million.