Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan) by Gustav Klimt, estimated ‘in the region of £65m’ at Sotheby’s.
Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan) was the last portrait Gustav Klimt painted and was still standing on an easel in his studio in Vienna at the time of his untimely death (he died after suffering a stroke and catching pneumonia).
Sotheby’s said it was “among his finest works, created when he was still in his artistic prime”, even though it was produced slightly outside Klimt’s famous ‘golden period’ when he painted a series of celebrated portraits such as his famous Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I which dates from a decade earlier.
Dame mit Fächer will be offered at Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary evening auction on June 27 with an estimate in the region of £65m, the highest pitch for any painting ever offered in Europe.
Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan) has the highest estimate for any work ever offered at an auction in Europe.
The consignment follows some high prices for Klimt landscapes sold in the last year, including Birch Forest which sold at Christie’s Paul Allen sale in November for $91m (£80m). While that price was an auction record for the artist, Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I was sold privately to Ronald Lauder for $135m in 2006 while Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II was sold privately by Oprah Winfrey to a Chinese buyer for $150m in 2016.
While all of the current top 10 highest auction prices have been set in New York, the highest sum for a work sold in Europe is Alberto Giacometti's (1901-66) sculpture L'Homme qui Marche I which made £58m at Sotheby’s London in 2010.
Provenance
The current painting was acquired shortly after Klimt’s death by Viennese industrialist Erwin Böhler whose family were close friends and patrons of both Klimt and Egon Schiele. The work eventually passed to his brother Heinrich and then, upon his death in 1940, to Heinrich’s wife Mabel.
By 1967 it was in the collection of Austrian collector Rudolf Leopold who is known to have purchased a large group of Schiele drawings from Mabel Böhler in 1952 and may also have acquired this work at the same time.
Dame mit Fächer was last on the market nearly 30 years ago when it sold at Sotheby's New York for $10.6m (£7.1m) in 1994. The buyer back then was a member of the current owner’s family.
It has since appeared in a number of exhibitions including most recently, one at the Belvedere in Vienna where it was shown alongside a number of Klimt’s other late and important works.
