Klimt’s ‘Lady With a Fan’ Brings $108.4 Million, Auction Record for the Artist
Post-Brexit London regained some credibility as the capital of Europe’s high-value art market on Tuesday when a radiant portrait by Gustav Klimt, “Lady With a Fan,” sold at Sotheby’s for 85.3 million pounds with fees, or about $108.4 million. The price was an auction high for the renowned Austrian artist and was the highest for a public sale in Europe, beating Alberto Giacometti’s “Walking Man I,” which sold for $104.3 million in 2010, also at Sotheby’s in London.
Certain to achieve at least $80 million, courtesy of a prearranged minimum price pledged by a third-party guarantor, the painting inspired 10 minutes of competition from three Asian bidders before selling to the Hong Kong-based art adviser Patti Wong, who was seated in the middle of the salesroom. The audience erupted into the sort of thunderous applause that hasn’t been heard at a London auction for some years.
“The price was within our expectations,” said Wong, the former chair of Sotheby’s Asia, who added that she was buying for a Hong Kong collector.
The final price topped Klimt’s previous auction high of $104.6 million, given in November for the 1903 landscape “Birch Forest,” at Christie’s, in New York.
Source: The New York Times
