Klimt’s Lost-Era Portrait Becomes Second Most Expensive Painting Ever Sold

We all might be familiar with Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss—the gilded lovers who have slipped into the cultural zeitgeist through posters, scarves, museum totes, and countless dorm-room walls. But this week, another Klimt has pulled the artist back into the global spotlight, more than a century after its creation. Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, painted between 1914 and 1916, has surged into art-market history after selling for an astonishing $236.4 million, making it the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.

Gustav KlimtGetty Images

What makes this moment resonate far beyond the auction room is not only the jaw-dropping price, but the layered history carried by the painting itself. Lederer, draped in an ornate Chinese robe, belonged to Vienna’s intellectual circle—families deeply intertwined with Klimt’s creative world. Her portrait survived the turbulence of the 20th century: looted by the Nazis, nearly destroyed in wartime fire, then reclaimed by her family before quietly entering private hands. For decades it hung in the Fifth Avenue home of Leonard Lauder, who considered it the “jewel” of his esteemed modern art collection.

Now, with six bidders battling for twenty minutes in a New York saleroom, Klimt’s work has re-emerged as a symbol of modernism’s enduring allure and of the complicated dance between cultural memory, private wealth, and the art market’s ever-expanding appetite.

But what is the fascination with this particular Klimt painting that has bid for a whopping $236.4 million?

To understand why this painting strikes such a chord—financially, culturally, emotionally—you have to understand who Elisabeth Lederer was.

Born into one of Vienna’s most prominent Jewish families, Lederer belonged to a rarefied social world that served as an engine for early 20th-century intellectual life. Her parents were patrons of the arts, close to Klimt, and intimately linked with the Secessionist movement that sought to propel Austrian art beyond the constraints of the past.

In the portrait, Lederer is swathed in a Chinese robe, its patterning echoing Klimt’s fascination with textiles, ornament, and the decorative arts. Her posture is stately though slightly withdrawn; her gaze non- confrontational yet direct. The painting emerges from a moment of cultural flourishing, just before Europe slid irrevocably into chaos.

But the portrait’s beauty cannot be separated from its trauma. Like countless artworks owned by Jewish families during the rise of Nazism, it was looted during the second world war. Later, it narrowly escaped destruction in a fire, a fact that lends the piece an almost miraculous quality. That it survived at all, intact and vibrant, feels like a kind of historical defiance.

Returned to the Lederer family in 1948, the painting remained with Elisabeth’s brother Erich, himself, a muse for Klimt’s friend Egon Schiele until he sold it in 1983. Two years later, Erich died, and the portrait entered a new chapter of its life in the hands of Leonard A. Lauder.

Portrait of Elizabeth LedererGetty Images

The Connection To Estée Lauder

Leonard Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics empire, was not merely a wealthy collector but a deeply invested steward of art history. For decades, he assembled a prestigious collection of modern art, marked by a discerning eye and personal devotion.

According to his longtime adviser, art historian Emily Braun, the Klimt portrait was his crown jewel. Lauder reportedly ate lunch beside it whenever he was home—a quiet ritual of appreciation for a painting that represented both personal joy and cultural magnificence.

When Lauder died in June at age 92, the art world wondered how his collection valued at over half a billion dollars would disperse. This sale was the answer. Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer alone accounted for over 40 per cent of the collection’s total value at auction, a testament to Klimt’s soaring market and to the aura surrounding a work of such rarity. Only two full-length Klimt portraits remain in private hands; with this sale, that number may shrink.

In 2023, Lady with a Fan sold for $108 million, setting a then-record for a Klimt painting at auction. But the true watershed moment came not at auction but in 2006, when Ronald Lauder, Leonard’s brother, purchased Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, widely known as Woman in Gold, for $135 million in a private sale. That acquisition captured the public imagination, partly because of the painting’s own restitution saga, but also because it seemed to canonise Klimt’s work within the pantheon of the world’s most coveted masterpieces.