Klimt piece sells for £180m

Artwork becomes second most expensive sold at auction

- SHAHANA YASMIN

A portrait by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt has sold for £179.7m, making it the most valuable art ever sold at Sotheby’s and the second most expensive work of art in auction history.

Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, a six-foot oil painting made between 1914-1916, depicts 20-year-old Elisabeth Lederer, daughter of prominent Viennese art patrons August and Serena Lederer, dressed in a Chinese-style dragon robe in a shimmering decorative setting.

The portrait came from the collection of Estee Lauder heir Leonard A Lauder, who acquired it in 1985 and displayed it for decades in his Fifth Avenue apartment. The work had an auction estimate of around $150m (£114.14m), but ended up fetching $236.4m.

It was the centrepiece of Sotheby’s inaugural sale in its newly acquired Manhattan headquarters at the Breuer Building, formerly home to the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Only two full-length Klimt portraits remain in private hands, and the auctioneer, Oliver Barker, described the canvas as “one of the last opportunities to acquire a portrait of this significance by the artist”.