From wartime survival to a triumphant return under the hammer, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer finds new life in a record-shattering auction.

In a night charged with anticipation and the electric hum of the global art elite, Sotheby’s New York witnessed a moment that will be etched into auction lore. Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, a towering, full-length masterpiece from 1914–16, sold for an astonishing $236.4 million — instantly becoming the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction and the priciest modern-era painting in history.

In the hushed, wood-paneled saleroom of Sotheby’s newly renovated Breuer Building, bidding opened briskly. Within moments it ignited into a 20-minute duel among six determined contenders, each driving the price higher, past whispers of a $150 million estimate, until the gavel fell and applause broke the tension. The result underscored a simple truth: Klimt, with his velvet sensuality and gilded mystique, still mesmerizes more than a century later.

A Portrait That Carried a Life Story

Elisabeth Lederer, serene yet enigmatic in her embroidered Chinese dragon robe, occupies one of Klimt’s last great society portraits — and one of his most psychologically layered. But the painting holds more than aesthetic value. Its history is woven with exile, wartime survival, and postwar restitution.

During the Nazi era, Lederer invoked Klimt in her fight to escape deportation, telling authorities the artist was her father — a claim that, according to historians, may have saved her life. The portrait itself was seized, later restituted to her brother Erich Lederer in 1948, and eventually made its way into the private collection of Estée Lauder heir Leonard A. Lauder, where it remained for nearly four decades.

The Lauder Legacy at Auction

Lauder, who passed away in June 2025, amassed one of the most formidable private collections of modern art. The Klimt headlined a 24-lot sale drawn from his holdings, now described as one of the most valuable single-owner collections ever brought to auction. Sotheby’s, reportedly guaranteeing around $400 million for the collection, delivered a result that exceeded even high expectations.

For decades, the Klimt hung in Lauder’s Fifth Avenue dining room — a private treasure rarely glimpsed outside museum loans. Its re-emergence on the market created a cultural flashpoint: a rare convergence of patronage, provenance, and painterly brilliance.

Rarity Meets Market Fever

Only two full-length Klimt portraits remain in private hands. That scarcity — combined with a compelling backstory and meticulous preservation — created the perfect storm for a record-setting sale.

Just last year, Klimt’s Lady with a Fan set a European auction record at $108 million. The new figure more than doubles that, signalling an escalating appetite for masterpieces from modernism’s golden age.

Though the price still trails Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi — the auction world’s reigning champion at $450.3 million — Klimt’s achievement marks a seismic shift in the hierarchy of modern art valuations.

A Triumph for Art, Memory, and Market Power

This sale is more than a moment of market exuberance. It renews interest in Klimt’s late portraiture, reopens chapters of the Lederer family’s turbulent history, and solidifies Leonard Lauder’s reputation as one of the most influential collectors of the era.

As the painting moves once again into private hands, its story — spanning war, survival, cultural reinvention, and now headline-grabbing acclaim — reflects why Klimt’s art continues to resonate: luminescent, romantic, and forever entangled with the lives it touched.