LONDON – A late-life masterpiece by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt could become the most expensive painting ever sold in Europe when it is auctioned later this month.
Auctioneer Sotheby’s said on Wednesday that “Dame mit Fächer” — Lady with a Fan — will go up for sale June 27 in London, with an estimated price of 65 million pounds ($80 million).
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The last portrait Klimt completed before his death in 1918, the painting shows an unidentified woman against a resplendent, China-influenced backdrop of dragons and lotus blossoms.
It was last sold in 1994, going for $11.6 million at an auction in New York.
Sotheby’s head of impressionist and modern art department, Helena Newman, said the portrait was “a technical tour de force, full of boundary-pushing experimentation, as well as a heartfelt ode to absolute beauty.”
Famed for his bold, daring art nouveau paintings, Klimt was a key figure in artistic modernism at the start of the 20th century. His work has fetched some of the highest prices for any artist. Klimt’s “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II” sold at auction in 2006 for $87.9 million, and his landscape “Birch Forest” sold at Sotheby’s last year for $104.6 million.
Two more of his portraits are reported to have sold privately for more than $100 million.
The most expensive artworks auctioned in Europe, in dollar prices, are Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture “Walking Man I,” sold for $104.3 million at Sotheby’s in 2010, and Claude Monet’s painting “Le basin aux nymphéas,” which fetched $80.4 million at a Christie’s sale in 2008.
The world auction record for an artwork is the $450.3 million paid in 2017 for Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” — though some experts dispute whether the panting of Jesus Christ is wholly the work of the Renaissance master.