The most expensive painting ever offered for auction in Europe goes under the hammer in London this month.
Gustav Klimt’s portrait Dame mit Facher (Lady with a Fan) is estimated to fetch at least £65 million when it sells at Sotheby’s auction house on June 27.
The oil painting, done on a square canvas which roughly measures one metre by one metre, was first sold after being found still on its easel in the Austrian painter’s studio after his death in 1918 and was last bought in 1994 by the family of the present owner.
Helena Newman, Sotheby’s Europe chairman, said: ““Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan) is the last portrait Gustav Klimt completed before his untimely death, when still in his artistic prime and producing some of his most accomplished and experimental works. Many of those works, certainly the portraits for which he is best known, were commissions. This, though, is something completely different - a technical tour de force, full of boundary-pushing experimentation, as well as a heartfelt ode to absolute beauty.”
One of only a few portraits by Klimt still in private hands, it is expected to break the current record for a painting sold at auction in Europe which has stood since 2008 when Claude Monet’s Le basin aux nymphéas sold at Christie’s in London for £59.4 million.
The auction house expects strong international interest in the work with Klimt’s trademark use of Asian patterns and motifs potentially making it a sought-after work for Chinese collectors.
However much it goes for it will almost certainly not break the world record for a work sold at auction which still stands with Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which went under the hammer for $450 million (then £341 million) in 2017.
That painting has not been shown publicly since that auction and is said to be in storage in Saudi Arabai where it is hoped it will eventually be exhibited.
