Written by Vandana KalraNew Delhi | November 19, 2025 11:27 AM IST 4 min readGustav Klimt’s Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer) [Photo Credit: Sotheby's]Believed to be one of the two full-length Gustav Klimt portraits that remain in private hands, the Austrian artist’s Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer) fetched $236.4 million, becoming the most expensive work of modern art sold at auction.The sale that took place on Tuesday evening at Sotheby’s first auction in its new address in New York’s Breuer building made the canvas the second most expensive artwork ever sold at an auction. The most expensive artwork ever sold at auction is Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci, which sold in 2017 for $450.3 m in 2017.Painted in 1914-1916, the six by four feet portrait has as its protagonist Elisabeth Lederer — daughter of Klimt’s most significant patrons Serena and August Lederer — dressed in a white shimmery gown, standing on a carpeted floor against a wisteria backdrop, inhabited by figures in dragon robes. A note on the oil on canvas on the Sotheby’s website states, “Here, Klimt reveals a fully self-possessed young woman, barely twenty years old. True to the sitter’s features, the face nonetheless bears the artist’s subtle touches, such as the tiny lines at either side of the mouth that turn her otherwise emotionless lips upward in an enigmatic smile. Any expression of self-consciousness is absent, though the rendering of her hands betrays restlessness if not a touch of angst. Venerated by the costumed figures who flank her, she is fantastically attired and wears a regal robe. The work’s symbolism through fashion is paramount to its conceptualisation: her clothes project hierarchy and rank, contemporaneity and tradition, individual taste and worldly sophistication. The background’s atmospheric brushwork appears in brushstrokes at once distinct and melding, in ineffable tones of pale blues and greens mottled by passages of peach and rose pink. Every aspect of this painting, from the carpeted floor to the white flower atop her coiffure, from the halo of background figures to the dragon robe adorning her — not to mention the penetrating black of her eyes—was carefully envisioned to seize the viewer’s attention and imagination.” Gustav Klimt’s Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer) [Photo Credit: Sotheby’s]Born in 1862 in Vienna, at the young age of 14 Klimt got admission into the prestigious Viennese School of Arts and Crafts, where he studied a range of subjects, including fresco painting and mosaic, and spent hours in Vienna’s museums, studying works of masters. Receiving decorative commissions early in his career, the work sold is the second of three portraits that the artist rendered of three generations of Lederer women, and also celebrates the artist’s fascination with Chinese art.Also Read | The “Mona Lisa of illuminated manuscripts” – a 15th century Bible – travels to RomeLooted by the Nazis and nearly destroyed in a fire during World War II, in 1948, the canvas was returned to Lederer’s brother Erich, who sold it in 1983, two years before his death. In 1985, the painting became part of the private art collection of Estée Lauder heirand American art collector Leonard A Lauder, who passed away earlier this year.The note on the work adds, “Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer strikes a balance between delicacy and authority. The full-length portrait format has its earliest traces in sculpture from antiquity; in the sixteenth century it was used by monarchs throughout Europe, such as Elizabeth I, to assert dominance and their divine right. Such compositions also convey wealth in no uncertain terms. The cost of a full-length portrait and the display of fabulous textiles are a statement of political, cultural and economic power. By the nineteenth century this mode of aristocratic portraiture was adopted by government officials and the wealthy bourgeoisie. To be sure, many members of European high society such as those depicted in Klimt’s 1888 painting of the old Burgtheater could—and did—commission full-length conservative effigies in shades of brown and black or vivacious “swagger” portraits, but very few immortalised themselves in daring modernist form.”© The Indian Express Pvt LtdTags:canvas