The six-foot-tall masterpiece, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, was painted between 1914 and 1916 and depicts the young heiress, daughter of Klimt’s patrons, draped in a Chinese robe.
The auction at Sotheby’s in New York saw six bidders competing for 20 minutes, though the auction house declined to reveal the winning buyer.
The painting has a storied history: looted by the Nazis during World War II and nearly destroyed in a fire, it was returned to Lederer’s brother, Erich, in 1948. Erich, often depicted by Klimt’s friend Egon Schiele, kept the painting for most of his life before selling it in 1983, two years before his death.
In 1985 the painting became part of the private art collection of Estée Lauder heir Leonard A Lauder, who displayed it in his Fifth Avenue home in New York but for brief periods when it was lent to galleries. Lauder died in June, aged 92.
Art historian Emily Braun, who worked as Lauder’s art adviser for nearly four decades, told CNN that the painting was the jewel of his collection.
“He ate lunch whenever he was at home, and lunch would be at a little round table right by the painting,” Braun said.
The painting was one of just two full-length Klimt portraits that remain in private hands.
It was predicted before Tuesday that the Klimt painting would sell for more than $150m (£114m, A$230m). But it smashed expectations to represent more than 40% of the total value of Lauder’s collection, which fetched $575.5m (£437.5m, A$885.7m) with fees.
The sale of Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer sets a new record for a Klimt painting at auction, surpassing the $108m record set by the sale of Lady with a Fan in 2023.
In 2006, Lauder’s brother Ronald paid $135m in a private sale, rather than at auction, for Klimt’s famous Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 1, widely known as Woman in Gold.
