Gustav Klimt’s Dame mit Fäscher (Lady with a Fan), 1917-18, fetched £74 million ($94.3 million) at the Sotheby’s London modern and contemporary evening auction on June 27, setting a record for a work sold at a European auction. A further $14.1 million in fees was attached to the price, bringing the total to a whopping $108.4 million. The work by the renowned Austrian artist broke the record previously held by sculptor Alberto Giacometti’s Walking Man I, 1960, which went for $92.5 million, or $104.3 million with fees, at a Sotheby’s London sale in 2010. The highest amount previously commanded by a painting at a European auction was $80.4 million, for Claude Monet’s 1919 Le basin aux nymphaes in 2008, at a Christie’s sale in London.
The sale is certain to elicit a sigh of relief in the London art world, whose lifeblood has seemed to ebb in recent years as Brexit took hold, narrowing the arteries connecting it to Europe.
Last auctioned by Sotheby’s New York in 1994 for a comparatively scant $11.6 million, the work was guaranteed to achieve at least $80 million, thanks to a minimum price pledged ahead of the sale by a third-party guarantor. According to multiple reports, the appearance of the Klimt—which, though unsigned, was still on the easel in the artist’s studio at the time of his death—sparked fierce competition among three bidders, with Hong Kong–based dealer Patti Wong, a former chair of Sotheby’s Asia, taking home the prize on behalf of a Hong Kong collector.
Klimt, the leader of the Vienna Secessionists, has seen a resurgence in popularity in roughly the past two decades, previously peaking with the New York sale this past November of the artist’s 1903 landscape Birch Forest, which hammered at $104.6 million, inclusive of fees. The global record for the most expensive work at auction is held by Leonardo da Vinci’s ca.1500 Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World), which raked in a staggering $450.3 million at a Christie’s New York sale in 2017.
