After a nearly 20-minute bidding war that proceeded at times in increments of $5m and sprang back to life after several calls of “fair warning” from auctioneer Oliver Barker, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer ultimately went to a bidder on the phone with Julian Dawes, Sotheby\u2019s vice chairman and head of Impressionist and modern art. The crowded room at Sotheby’s new headquarters<\/a> in the former Whitney Museum of Modern Art building on Madison Avenue erupted with applause after Dawes’s bidder outdueled four other phone bidders and one woman seated in one of the front rows.<\/p>\n Gustav Klimt’s Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, 1914-16) came to market with an on-request estimate $150m (estimates are calculated without fees) and ultimately sold for a hammer price of $205m ($236.3m with fees) Courtesy Sotheby’s<\/p>\n The top lot of the standalone sale of works from the collection of the late billionaire cosmetics heir Leonard A. Lauder<\/a>, the Klimt hung in Lauder\u2019s home for decades before a long-term loan to the National Gallery of Canada that ended earlier this year.<\/p>\n Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer came to market with an on-request estimate of more than $150m. It was backed by a guarantee and irrevocable bids, ensuring it would achieve a record result. It is one of the last major full-length portraits by Klimt still in private hands.<\/p>\n The painting shows 20-year-old Elisabeth Lederer, the daughter of Jewish industrial magnate August Lederer, dressed in a flowing robe and posed in front of an East Asian art-influenced backdrop. Lederer and his wife, Serena, were Klimt\u2019s most important collectors. So close were the Lederers to Klimt that Elisabeth was able to escape Nazi persecution during the invasion of Austria by claiming Klimt was her biological father. Elisabeth\u2019s portrait was seized by Nazis in 1939 and returned to the family after the Second World War. It has been in Lauder\u2019s collection since the 1980s.<\/p>\n Maurizio Cattelan’s America (2016) was offered with a $9.9m estimate based on its weight in gold Courtesy Sotheby’s<\/p>\n Another buzzy lot Tuesday evening was Maurizio Cattelan\u2019s America<\/a> (2016), offered as part of the multiple-owner The Now and contemporary art evening sale and widely reported to have been consigned by Steve Cohen, the Museum of Modern Art trustee and billionaire owner of the New York Mets. Sotheby\u2019s had set the estimate for the 18-karat gold, fully functional toilet at just over $9.9m based on the value of the gold used to make it as of 5pm on Tuesday. However, the work was met by an auction room seemingly drained of interest.<\/p>\n America garnered a single bid, from a client on the phone with Sotheby\u2019s vice chairman for science and natural history Cassandra Hatton, and sold for a hammer price of $10m ($12.1m with fees). A cryptic announcement by Sotheby’s after the sale said the work had “sold to a famous American brand”, but a spokesperson for the auction house declined to elaborate.<\/p>\n The result for America fell short of Cattelan\u2019s auction record, which remains $17.2m, set in 2016 at Christie\u2019s New York by the sculpture Him (2001), which consists of a kneeling, child-like depiction of Adolf Hitler.<\/p>\n Sotheby\u2019s said this iteration of America is the only known version still in existence. Another edition was installed in a bathroom at the Guggenheim Museum<\/a> in New York, where it drew more than 100,000 users during a year-long run. That piece was later loaned to Blenheim Palace<\/a> in the UK in 2019, but was stolen<\/a> just two days after it went on display. Two men were convicted<\/a> in the case earlier this year, and investigators believe the gold toilet was ultimately melted down and destroyed.<\/p>\n This story will be updated with a full report from the night’s sales at Sotheby’s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gustav Klimt\u2019s six-foot-tall painting Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-16) sold for $205m ($236.3m with fees)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[22078,22079,9,11,10,13851],"class_list":{"0":"post-44398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-art-market","9":"tag-auction-houses","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news","13":"tag-sothebys"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/a7e91ab6390449a79a9fc08ddf1f535d730ed0ad-2000x2805.jpg\"\/)
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