Klimt’s ‘Lady With a Fan’ Brings $108.4 Million, Auction Record for the Artist
Klimt’s art-historical importance as the leader of the fin-de-siècle Vienna Secession and the decorative splendor of his paintings have made him a highly regarded artist of all time. But in 2006, New York-based cosmetics giant Ronald S. With $35 million paid out, its value skyrocketed to another dimension.
The price negotiated in the private sale was the highest paid for any work of art at the time. the masterpiece, From Klimt’s so-called “golden stage”, It was the subject of a lengthy lawsuit that was adapted into a 2015 film starring Helen Mirren. “Woman in Gold” is now the centerpiece of the Lauders Museum of Art. Neue Galleries Museum of New York.
Most recently, in 2017, in another private transaction, Oprah Winfrey sold Klimt’s 1912 Adele Bloch-Bauer II to a Chinese collector for $150 million. According to Bloomberg. A slightly later portrait of the charismatic Bloch-Bauer featured a colorful, loosely drawn background of exotic fabrics, resembling a Woman with a Fan. Scholars associate this decoration with the “Japonism” craze that influenced European artists of the time.
Tuesday’s record price was the highest for any piece sold last month in a series of auctions in New York, bucking recent market trends. Since the UK voted to leave the European Union in a referendum in 2016, major auction houses Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips have struggled to attract the highest quality pieces for sale in the British capital. .
The presence of Klimt boosts, Lucien Freud “Night Interior” 1968-1969, sold for $12.2 million — Sotheby’s two-part evening sale of 73 lots of modern and contemporary art raised $252.9 million. A year before the Brexit vote, a similar Sotheby’s evening sale in the summer of 2015 raised about $486 million at the time.
On Wednesday night, Christie’s will showcase 67 works of art from the 20th and 21st centuries that are estimated to fetch at least $72 million, led by an 1896 landscape painting by Paul Signac.Calanques des Canebies (Point de Bamer), Saint-Tropez‘ is worth $7 million. Christie’s equivalent London sales in 2015 were about $263 million.
