2023-06-27 20:28:26
In its first appearance on the market in almost thirty years, Gustav Klimt’s (1862-1918) latest masterpiece, ‘Lady with a Fan’ (Dame mit Fächer), exceeded expectations at Sotheby’s in London this evening, where it sold for £85.3 million ($108.4 million; €99.2 million), setting a new auction record for the Austrian painter and becoming the most valuable work of art ever auctioned in Europe. The result is also the second-highest price for a portrait – from any era – ever sold at auction.
After a ten-minute battle between four bidders, three of whom were in the London room, Klimt’s latest portrait was eventually sold to Patti Wong (Founder of Patti Wong & Associates), who bid in the room on behalf of a Hong Kong collector.
The price hit tonight eclipses the $104.3 million (£65 million) feat for Alberto Giacometti’s ‘L’homme qui marche I (Walking Man I)’, which sold at Sotheby’s London in 2010. The auction record for Klimt was outbid (it was $104.6 million so far for the Paul G. Allen Collection’s “Birch Forest,” sold last year in New York). “Dame mit Fächer” was last offered for sale almost thirty years ago at Sotheby’s in New York, in 1994, when it was bought for $11.6 million (£7.8 million), setting a new auction record for the artist at the time. This evening the opera has regained this status.
When Gustav Klimt died unexpectedly one February day in 1918, the painting was still on the easel in his studio. “Lady with a Fan” is also considered one of Klimt’s finest works, created when he was still in his prime and at a time when the “formality” of his earlier commissioned works gave way to a new expressiveness – an ever deeper and more joyful immersion in drawing, color and form, which – while clearly influenced by his contemporaries Van Gogh, Matisse and Gauguin – becomes something completely different in the hands of the Austrian painter.
Similarly, while the slightly earlier works of Klimt’s famous “golden age”, headed by the iconic 1907 portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, see the protagonist presented as an icon, in the midst to a tapestry of golden shapes, in this case the figure almost dissolves into the background, while the soft texture of the woman’s skin repeats itself against the pale yellow background.
The painting was acquired shortly after Klimt’s death by the Viennese industrialist Erwin Böhler. The Böhler family, which included Erwin’s brother Heinrich and cousin Hans, were friends and patrons of Klimt and Egon Schiele. The work later passed to Heinrich and then, upon his death in 1940, to Heinrich’s wife Mabel. As of 1967 the painting was in the collection of Rudolf Leopold, who is known to have purchased a large group of Schiele drawings from Mabel Böhler in 1952 and may have purchased this work from her as well. In 1994 it was auctioned off and bought by the owner’s family, who asked Sotheby’s to sell the masterpiece a few weeks later.
Klimt began working on the “Lady with a fan” in 1917, by which time he was one of the most famous portrait painters in Europe: the commissions followed one another at a rapid pace and the artist was able to fetch prices far higher than those of his contemporaries. But this is a rare work painted entirely to pursue his own interests. Full of freedom and spontaneity, it reflects Klimt’s joy in painting and celebrating beauty in its purest form. It also reveals the innovative approach of him.
Klimt also gives full expression to his complete fascination with Chinese and Japanese art and culture. In “Dame mit Fächer”, Klimt draws mainly on Chinese motifs: the phoenix (symbol of immortality and rebirth, luck and fidelity) and lotus flowers (symbols of love, happy marriage and/or purity). Furthermore, the flattening of the background and the juxtaposition of patterns reflect his deep interest in Japanese woodblock prints.
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