$236.4m Klimt Masterpiece Becomes Most Valuable Work Ever Sold in Sotheby's History at Inaugural Breuer Sale

Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer  

From the Leonard A. Lauder Collection Sells For $236.4 Million In First Ever Auction at the Breuer

Becoming the Most Valuable Work by Klimt Ever Sold at Auction & the Most Valuable Work Ever Sold by Sotheby's

Gustav Klimt, Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer), executed in 1914-16.

NEW YORK, 18 NOVEMBER 2025 – Gustav Klimt’s towering masterpiece Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer has just sold for $236.4 million at Sotheby’s inaugural auction at the Breuer Building in New York, more than doubling the previous auction record for the artist and marking the most valuable work ever sold in Sotheby’s history. The painting, now also the second most valuable work ever sold at auction, was offered as part of the landmark evening auction dedicated to the collection of Leonard A. Lauder, one of America’s most significant collectors and cultural philanthropists. 

The portrait, which sold moments ago and was presented as lot 8 in an ongoing 24 lot evening sale of masterworks from the Collection of Leonard A Lauder, attracted bids from no fewer than six collectors before finally selling - after a twenty minute bidding battle - to Sotheby's Vice Chairman, Head of Impressionist and Modern Art, Julian Dawes, bidding on the telephone for a client. 

One of the most famous and admired of all the Viennese artist’s celebrated paintings of women, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer depicts the daughter of the artist’s most important patrons. Full-length society portraits of this impressive scale and from Klimt’s pinnacle period (1912-17) are exceptionally rare; the majority in major museum collections. The painting offered this evening was one of only two such commissioned portraits remaining in private hands.

So far, almost every work from the collection of Leonard A. Lauder - which was seen by some 25,000 visitors during the pre-sale exhibition at the Breuer - has sold well above expectations. A full summary of results from the sale - which includes two further paintings by Gustav Klimt, as well as major works by Edvard Munch, Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, Agnes Martin - will follow at the close of tonight’s auction. The evening continues with the Now & Contemporary Art Evening Auction, featuring - inter alia - Maurizio Cattelan’s America, a fully functioning toilet cast in 18-karat gold, bidding for which will open at a price reflective of the value of work’s weight in gold at close of market today. 

Gustav Klimt and the Lederer Family

Elisabeth Franziska Lederer was the daughter of industrialist August Lederer and his wife, Serena Lederer (née Pulitzer), who, since the early 1890s, had quickly established themselves as the most illustrious and important of Klimt’s patrons. In the wake of a dispute with the artistic establishment that had threatened his career, it was the Lederers who came to Klimt’s rescue, amassing what swiftly became the largest and most important collection of his work anywhere.

As early as 1892, Klimt had painted Serena Lederer—a portrait that now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York—and later Serena commissioned from him a portrait of her mother, Charlotte Pulitzer, as well as the present painting of her daughter, Elisabeth.

Elisabeth Lederer had therefore known Klimt all her life and affectionately referred to him as “Uncle.” Work on the portrait appears to have continued for almost three years, with Klimt, as was increasingly characteristic during his later years, seemingly never satisfied. “Months passed making drawings in various positions,” Elisabeth recalled. “Uncle [Klimt] cursed and swore; it was a real pleasure to listen to.”

The Lauder Legacy
 

Leonard A. Lauder was one of the art world’s most passionate and influential collectors, philanthropists, and civic leaders for more than half a century. His first significant art purchase – a late collage by the German Dadaist Kurt Schwitters – was acquired at Sotheby’s Parke Bernet in 1966.

Over the following decades he built the world’s finest private collection of Cubist art. His landmark gift of 90 seminal Cubist works to The Metropolitan Museum of Art transformed the museum’s modern holdings. At the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he served as chairman, he is regarded as the institution’s greatest champion. In 2008, his record $131 million gift – the largest single donation in the Whitney’s history – underpinned the museum’s move to its downtown home. He also donated and helped the museum acquire more than 1,300 works  for its collection.  

*아티스트와 뮤즈 <9> 구스타프 클림트와 아델레, 에밀리, 세레나, 엘리자베스, 마다

*독일 모젤 트라벤 트라바흐의 구스타프 클림트와 유겐스틸(아르누보)

*스페인 독감과 화가들 <2> 구스타프 클림트(1862-1918)

*영화 '황금옷을 입은 여인(The Woman in Gold)' 

*노이에 갈러리 가이드