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Barbra Streisand said on Instagram on Thursday, Nov. 20 that she regrets selling a Gustav Klimt painting she once bought for $17,000
Her post comes two days after another Klimt painting, “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer,” sold at auction for $236 million
“You should never sell art you love,” Streisand, who owned Klimt’s “Ria Munk on Her Deathbed,” wrote in her caption
Barbra Streisand is feeling nostalgic for a Gustav Klimt painting she once owned.
Just days after another work from the late Austrian artist sold for $236 million on auction at Sotheby’s, Streisand lamented parting ways with her own Klimt.
“My longtime assistant made me a book of art that I’ve loved and sold. One of them was this painting of Miss Ria Munk on her Deathbed by Gustav Klimt that I bought in 1969 for $17,000, which seemed like a lot of money at the time,” Streisand, 83, wrote in an Instagram post on Thursday, Nov. 20.
“I sold it in 1998 because I became interested in Frank Lloyd Wright and the Arts & Crafts movement. Oh how I regret selling her. As the title of the book says, ‘You should never sell art you love,’ ” she concluded the caption.
Streisand’s post included a black and white photo of her sitting beside the painting.
Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty
Barbra Streisand once owned ‘Ria Munk on her Deathbed’ by Gustav Klimt
Two days before the “Evergreen” singer reminisced about the artwork, New York auction house Sotheby’s sold Klimt’s “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” for the eye-popping, nine-figure amount, making it the second-most expensive piece of art to be sold at auction, according to ARTnews, The New York Times and the BBC.
The price also set a record for an amount fetched by a Klimt.
The painting had been owned by late billionaire Leonard A. Lauder, the cosmetics company heir and art collector who also owned pieces by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Evard Munch, among others.
The National Gallery of Canada, where the painting was on loan for many years, has an account of the the artwork’s history.
“Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, painted over three years between 1914 and 1916, is an imposing, dazzling painting that speaks of the power, elegance and confidence of Vienna’s high society in the early 20th century,” according to an article on the museum’s website.
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Gustav Klimt in 1917.
“Those qualities are revealed here both explicitly and more covertly: in the sitter’s expression of calm self-assurance, for example, as well as in semi-concealed symbols surrounding the central figure.”
Remarkably, the painting — and the family’s relationship to Klimt, who painted several Lederers — helped save Elisabeth’s life after the Nazis annexed Austria in the 1930s, according to the article.
Elisabeth, who was Jewish, “circulated the story that Klimt, who was non-Jewish and had died in 1918, was her real father….Elisabeth’s mother, Szerena, willingly signed an affidavit attesting to Klimt’s paternity in order to save her daughter. The scheme worked and the Nazi regime provided Elisabeth with a document stating that she was descended from Klimt.”
“Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” was initially supposed to fetch around $150 million, PEOPLE previously reported.
Read the original article on People