Gustav Klimt’s Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan) (1917-18) became the most expensive painting to ever sell in at an auction in Europe during Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Evening Auction, after it hammered for an astounding £74 million ($94.3 million).
With fees, the total price achieved was over £85.3 million ($108 million). The previous high-sale record for a European auction was held by Alberto Giacometti’s s Walking Man I, which sold for $104.3 million at Sotheby’s in 2010.
Lady with a Fan was expected to reach around $80 million. The last time the masterpiece was on the auction block, at Sotheby’s in 1994, it sold for $11.6 million, a fraction of its current record smashing price.
According to the auction house, Lady with a Fan was still on an easel in Klimt’s studio when the artist died due to a stroke in early 1918. Despite being less famous than The Kiss (1907-8) or Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907), Lady with a Fan displays all of the spontaneity and formal prowess of the artist’s most cherished works.