A portrait by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt sold for $236.4 million (£179 million) in New York on Tuesday, making it the second most expensive piece ever sold at auction.
Six people participated in a 20-minute bid for the portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, painted between 1914 and 1916.
Sotheby’s auction house has not revealed the identity of the buyer.
The portrait was looted by the Nazis and almost destroyed in a fire in World War II, but was rescued in 1948.
The artwork was returned to Lederer’s brother Erich, a friend and subject of Klimt’s contemporary Egon Schiele. The piece remained in Lederer’s possession for most of his life, before he sold it in 1983, according to Sotheby’s.
The painting shows Lederer, heiress and daughter of one of Klimt’s patrons, dressed in a white robe and standing in front of a blue tapestry covered with Asian motifs.
The Nazis, who annexed Austria in 1938, looted Lederer’s art collection but left family portraits, says the National Gallery of Canada.
Estée Lauder’s heir, Leonard A. Lauder, added it to his private collection in 1985, where it was displayed in his home on Fifth Avenue in New York.
Tuesday’s sale exceeded expectations, with the painting predicted to sell for $150 million before the auction. The second highest sale of a Klimt on record was The Lady with a Fan, which sold for $108.8 million in 2023 in London.
Several other Klimt works in Lauder’s collection were auctioned at the same event, including Flowering Meadow and Forest Slope in Unterach am Attersee, which fetched between $60 and $80 million each.
The most expensive work of art ever sold at auction was Salvator Mundi, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which sold in 2017 for $450.3 million.
Also seen Tuesday was a sculpture of a fully functioning golden toilet by conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan, which raised $12.1 million just an hour after Klimt’s record-breaking sale.
The 101kg toilet received only one offer. Sotheby’s said the buyer was a famous American brand.
