Klimt painting sets European record with $94 million price tag at Sotheby’s auction in London

LONDON — A late-life masterpiece by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt sold Tuesday for 74 million pounds ($94.35 million), making it the most expensive painting ever auctioned in Europe.

“Dame mit Fächer” — Lady with a Fan — sold to a buyer in the room at Sotheby’s in London. The sale price exceeded the presale estimate of 65 million pounds, or $80 million.

Previously, the most expensive painting auctioned in Europe was Claude Monet’s “Le basin aux nymphéas,” which fetched $80.4 million at a Christie’s sale in 2008.

The piece sold Tuesday was the last portrait Klimt completed before his death in 1918. The painting shows an unidentified woman against a resplendent, China-influenced backdrop of dragons and lotus blossoms.

It was last sold in 1994, going for $11.6 million at an auction in New York.

Famed for his bold, daring art nouveau paintings, Klimt was a key figure in artistic modernism at the start of the 20th century. His work has fetched some of the highest prices for any artist.

Klimt’s “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II” sold at a New York auction in 2006 for $87.9 million, and his landscape “Birch Forest” sold at Christie’s in New York last year for $104.6 million.

Two more of his portraits are reported to have sold privately for more than $100 million.

The most expensive artwork ever auctioned in Europe, in dollar prices, was not a painting but a sculpture: Alberto Giacometti’s “Walking Man I” sold for $104.3 million at Sotheby’s in 2010.

The world auction record for an artwork is the $450.3 million paid in 2017 for Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi,” though some experts dispute whether the panting of Jesus Christ is wholly the work of the Renaissance master.