Klimt portrait turns into second costliest art work offered at public sale

A portrait by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt fetched $236.4 million in New York on Tuesday (November 18, 2025), changing into the second costliest art work ever offered at public sale.

Six bidders battled for 20 minutes over the “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer”, which Klimt painted between 1914 and 1916.

The piece depicts the daughter of Klimt’s foremost patron wearing a white imperial Chinese gown, standing earlier than a blue tapestry with Asian-inspired motifs.

Sotheby’s, which managed the sale, didn’t disclose the identification of the client.

The costliest portray ever offered at public sale stays the “Salvator Mundi”, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which was purchased for $450 million in 2017.

“Full-length society portraits of this spectacular scale and from Klimt’s pinnacle interval (1912-17) are exceptionally uncommon; the bulk in main museum collections,” Sotheby’s mentioned of Tuesday’s (November 18, 2025) sale.

“The portray provided this night was considered one of solely two such commissioned portraits remaining in non-public arms,” it added in an announcement.

Several different works from Klimt had been auctioned on the similar occasion, together with “Flowering Meadow” for $86 million and “Forest Slope at Unterach am Attersee” for $68.3 million — each a part of the gathering of Estee Lauder cosmetics inheritor Leonard Lauder, who died earlier in 2025.

In complete, 24 heaps from the Lauder assortment generated $527.5 million.

For Klimt, the previous public sale file for his work was held by “Lady with a Fan”, which offered for £85.3 million ($108.8 million) in London in 2023.

Another notable public sale on Tuesday (November 18, 2025) noticed Italian provocateur Maurizio Cattelan’s stable gold bathroom go for $12.1 million, and was offered to a well-known American model, in accordance with Sotheby’s.

An earlier model of the luxe latrine, titled “America”, was stolen in 2019 from a fortress in England.

Though it was by no means recovered — and sure was melted down for money — three males had been convicted in reference to the theft.

On Thursday (November 20, 2025), a self-portrait by Frida Kahlo has an opportunity of setting a file for a feminine artist when it goes on sale, additionally at Sotheby’s in New York.

Estimated at $40 to $60 million, the 1940 piece referred to as “The Dream (The Bed)” exhibits the Mexican painter sleeping in a mattress overshadowed by a big skeleton.

The costliest portray by a feminine artist offered to this point is a 1932 work by American Georgia O’Keeffe, which fetched $44.4 million in 2014.

The file for Frida Kahlo is one other self-portrait from 1949, “Diego and I”, which offered for $34.4 million in New York.