Style

Klimt’s ‘last masterpiece’ sells for record-breaking $108.4 million

The last portrait completed by Gustav Klimt became the most expensive artwork ever to sell at a European auction Tuesday, when it sold for a staggering £85.3 million ($108.4 million) in London.

Depicting an unidentified female subject, “Dame mit Fächer” (Lady with a Fan) also established a new record for Klimt, outselling “Birch Forest,” which fetched $104.6 million last year from the collection of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen. The bidding on Tuesday lasted 10 minutes before going to an unidentified buyer in Hong Kong, according to Sotheby’s auction house.

“Dame mit Fächer” was one of two paintings found at the Austrian artist’s studio upon his death in 1918, according to Sotheby’s.

A work the artist had started a year prior, in 1917, “Dame mit Fächer” is rendered in Klimt’s characteristically rich, expressive style. Like much of his output, it showcases the East Asian influences that shaped his work — not only in the fan held by his unknown sitter, but also the use of phoenix and lotus blossom motifs. The background’s flattened perspective meanwhile evokes the Japanese wood-block prints that featured prominently in the painter’s sizable Asian art collection.

Sotheby’s had dubbed the portrait Klimt’s “last masterpiece,” with the auction house’s head of impressionist and modern art evening sales, Thomas Boyd Bowman, describing it ahead of the sale as “stunning.”