European record broken. The painting by the famous Austrian painter Gustav Klimt the Lady with a Fan was auctioned on Tuesday June 27 in London for 74 million pounds (more than 86 million euros), exceeding the estimates of Sotheby’s, organizer of the sale.
The Lady with a Fan, a late work by the painter who died in 1918, thus dethroned the previous European record held since February 2010 by a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, Walking Man I, which had sold for 65 million at the time. of books, already at Sotheby’s.
The auction house had billed Klimt’s work as “not only the star of London’s summer auction season, but also one of the finest and most valuable ever offered in Europe.” She judged that it could sell for 65 million pounds, well below the price finally obtained under the hammer, after ten minutes of bidding and a breathless suspense in the last moments, where two potential buyers were still in the running. Once the costs inherent in the sale have been added, the person who won the auction, whose identity has not been revealed, will have to pay 85.3 million pounds (nearly 99 million euros).
Gustav Klimt had begun the canvas in 1917, a year before his death in 1918 at the age of 55. We see a dark-haired woman, of unknown identity, wearing a loose dress and bare shoulders, holding a fan in her hand. Behind her, we find patterns and colors often seen in the artist, such as blue and green birds, flowers on a golden yellow background.
A Klimt sold for $104.5 million in 2022
The painting had been in a private collection since 1994, according to information given by Sotheby’s. It had once belonged to the Viennese industrialist Erwin Bohler, then to his brother, and to the widow of the latter until the 1940s. Much later, in the years 1988, it also belonged to the businessman and American patron Wendell Cherry.
“Exuding freedom and spontaneity, [the portrait] reflects Klimt’s joy in painting it and celebrating beauty in its purest form,” according to the auction house. In 2022, during an auction at Christie’s in New York of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s art collection, a painting by Klimt, The Birch Forest, had sold for 104.5 million dollars (95 .32 million euros at the current exchange rate) at Christie’s in New York.
Among other notable sales in Europe, Claude Monet’s Water Lilies sold for £40.9 million at Christie’s in London in June 2008, while René Magritte’s Empire of Lights sold for £40.9 million. sold for £59.4 million at Sotheby’s in March 2022.
