Gustav Klimt’s ‘Lady with a Fan’ breaks European record with £85.3m sale
Gustav Klimt’s ‘Dame mit Fächer’ (‘Lady with a Fan’) has sold for a record-breaking £85.3m ($108.m, €99.2m) at Sotheby’s. The sale marked the highest price ever paid for an artwork at a European auction.
Making its first appearance on the market in 29 years, the piece exceeded pre-sale expectations of £65m. The final bid was placed by Patti Wong, founder of Patti Wong & Associates, who was representing a Hong Kong collector.
The previous record for an artwork sold in Europe was £65m for Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture ‘L’homme qui marche I’ (‘The Walking Man I’), sold at Sotheby’s London in 2010.
Helena Newman, Chair of Sotheby’s Europe and Worldwide Head of Impressionist and Modern Art, commented on the piece’s significance: “’Dame mit Fächer’ is the last portrait Gustav Klimt created before his untimely death. This is a technical tour de force, full of boundary-pushing experimentation and a heartfelt ode to absolute beauty.” Another treasured artwork by Klimt that remains unfinished is ‘The Bride’.
‘Lady with a Fan’, featuring an unnamed woman, was left unfinished in Klimt’s studio at the time of his death in 1918. Its use of Chinese motifs and patterns reminiscent of Japanese woodblock prints reflects Klimt’s diverse artistic influences.
The sale broke the previous auction record for a Klimt work, $104.6m for ‘Birch Forest,’ sold last year in New York. ‘Dame mit Fächer’ was last sold at Sotheby’s in New York in 1994 for $11.6m, a record at the time.
