With fanfare but not surprisingly, the last portrait ever painted by Gustav Klimt sold for a record price in Europe, reaching £85.3 million (with fees) at the evening sale of modern and contemporary art of Sotheby’s in London tonight (June 27).
Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a fan) (1917), executed a year before Gustav Klimt’s death in 1918, made headlines when it was sent was announced earlier this month: its estimate, “over £65million”, was the highest of any work offered at auction in the UK and Europe. Backed by both an irrevocable auction and a third-party guarantee, it was sure to sell. And that’s what he did, hammering £74m to the famous Councilor Patti Wong– former chairman of Sotheby’s Asia – bidding live in the New Bond Street auction room on behalf of a Hong Kong-based client.
Providing welcome punctuation to a so far largely flat auction that saw thin bids and many works either passed or sold below estimate, the Klimt received initial attention from two bidders in the room and two others on the phone. The four stages quickly turned into a two-way struggle between buyer and underbidder, liaising on the phone with Sotheby’s Asia Vice President Jen Hua. After ten impassioned minutes led by auctioneer Helena Newman, Sotheby’s President for Europe and global head of Impressionist and Modern Art, the underbidder dropped out of the race at £73.5million.
by Klimt Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a fan) (1917)
Courtesy of Sotheby’s
Klimt’s painting surpasses previous titleholder for Europe’s most expensive work sold at auction – Alberto Giacometti’s 1961 sculpture The Walking Man I, Who earned £65m (with fee) at Sotheby’s London in 2010. Historical auction records are not adjusted for inflation or fluctuations in currency strength.
Depicting a woman with her kimono slipping off her shoulder, the sensual, record-breaking portrait is “Klimt is experimenting and pushing boundaries,” says Newman. Sotheby’s last sold this painting nearly 30 years ago, in 1994, for $11.6 million (with fees), as part of the collection of Wendell Cherry, the entrepreneur and art collector American. It was handed over by the same family who bought it in 1994; Sotheby’s did not reveal the reason for its sale.
Klimt’s auction record stands at $104.5 million, reached at Christie’s New York last November by 1902 landscape painting birch forestfrom the collection of Paul G. Allen.
lady with a fan is tonight’s featured lot and represents around a third of the £155.5-197.5 million pre-sale estimate of the Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction (all pre-sale estimates are calculated free of charge ). This auction also sees the launch of a new sub-sale category, Face Off, focusing on portraits from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
But beyond headline-grabbing Klimt, tonight’s deals are considerably more pedestrian, with just two more eight-figure lots to come, both with estimates of £8-12million: Cy Twombly’s Untitled (1970) and a nude portrait by Lucian Freud of one of his most important models, Penny Cuthbertson.
The Modern and Contemporary evening auction was preceded by The Now sale, which included 14 works made in this century, many by rising stars in the market such as Julien Nguyen and Caroline Walker, as well as more names. established as Günther Förg and Mark Bradford. This sale reached £8.7m (costs included) against an estimate of £6.6m to £9.9m; three lots were withdrawn and one was adopted. While new auction records were set for Arthur Jafa and Michel Majerus, auction prices ten times higher than estimates were not observed, because has already been the case for this category.
- This article reports a current sale and will be updated.
