A late-life masterpiece by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt sold to a Hong Kong collector for £85.3 million (US$108.4 million), making it the most expensive artwork ever auctioned in Europe.
Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan) sold to Patti Wong, an art adviser representing a Hong Kong client, for a hammer price of £74 million (US$94.4 million) after a 10-minute bidding war between four art lovers at Sotheby’s in London.
The higher final figure includes a charge on top of the sale price known as the buyer’s premium.
The sale price well exceeded the presale estimate of £65 million, or US$80 million.
It also beat the previous European auction record of US$104.3 million – £65 million at the time – including buyer’s premium paid for Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture Walking Man I at Sotheby’s in 2010.
Previously, the most expensive painting auctioned in Europe was Claude Monet’s Le basin aux nymphéas, which fetched US$80.4 million at a Christie’s sale in 2008.
The piece sold Tuesday was the last portrait Klimt completed before his death in 1918. The painting shows an unidentified woman against a resplendent, China-influenced backdrop of dragons and lotus blossoms.
It was last sold in 1994, going for US$11.6 million at an auction in New York.
Famed for his bold, daring art nouveau paintings, Klimt was a key figure in artistic modernism at the start of the 20th century. His work has fetched some of the highest prices for any artist.
Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II sold at a New York auction in 2006 for US$87.9 million, and his landscape Birch Forest sold at Christie’s in New York last year for US$104.6 million.
Two more of his portraits are reported to have sold privately for more than US$100 million.
The world auction record for an artwork is the US$450.3 million paid in 2017 for Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, though some experts dispute whether the panting of Jesus Christ is wholly the work of the Renaissance master.
