Most expensive painting by Klimt sold at a private sale

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912), by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, sold privately for $150 million (£121.9 million) to an anonymous Chinese bidder in 2016. The seller was TV celebrity Oprah Winfrey, who had purchased the work for $87.9 million (£70.94 million) on 8 November 2006, giving her an estimated profit margin of 71% on the sale.

Adele Bloch-Bauer was a wealthy Viennese socialite and salonnière, one of Klimt’s leading patrons and the only model that he painted twice. The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II had a convoluted history. Adele Bloch-Bauer died in 1925, from meningitis. Her husband, Ferdinand, fled Austria after its annexation by Nazi Germany, and German soldiers looted the family’s paintings along with other belongings. Ferdinand bequeathed the estate to his niece and nephews on his death in 1945, but Austria’s state museum the Belvedere Gallery had already acquired the family’s Klimt artworks four years earlier. This resulted in a legal stand-off between the Austrian government and the heirs. After a prolonged court battles, both in the USA and Austria, a selection of Klimt’s works, including the two portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer, were returned to Ferdinand’s niece Maria Altmann in January 2006. The following November, the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II was bought by Oprah Winfrey at Christie’s New York, USA.

Klimt’s Lady with a Fan (1917) – the last portrait he ever painted – fetched £85.3 million ($107.6 million) at Sotheby's in London, UK, in June 2023, making it the most valuable work of art to be sold at auction in Europe.