Lauder Pays $135 Million, a Record, for a Klimt
By CAROL VOGEL
Published: June 19, 2006
A dazzling gold-flecked 1907 portrait by Gustav Klimt has been purchased for
the Neue Galerie in Manhattan by the cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder for
$135 million, the highest sum ever paid for a painting.
The portrait, of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of a Jewish sugar industrialist
and the hostess of a prominent Vienna salon, is considered one of the
artist's masterpieces. For years, it was the focus of a restitution battle
between the Austrian government and a niece of Mrs. Bloch-Bauer who argued
that it was seized along with four other Klimt paintings by the Nazis during
World War II. In January all five paintings were awarded to the niece, Maria
Altmann, now 90, who lives in Los Angeles, and other family members.
Although confidentiality agreements surrounding the sale forbid Mr. Lauder
to disclose the price, experts familiar with the negotiations, speaking on
condition of anonymity, said he paid $135 million for the work. In a
telephone interview Mr. Lauder did not deny that he had paid a record amount
for the painting, eclipsing the $104.1 million paid for Picasso's 1905 "Boy
With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice)" in an auction at Sotheby's in 2004.
"This is our Mona Lisa," said Mr. Lauder, a founder of the five-year-old
Neue Galerie, a tiny museum at Fifth Avenue and 86th Street devoted entirely
to German and Austrian fine and decorative arts. "It is a once-in-a-lifetime
acquisition." He said Christie's had helped him negotiate the purchase.
For most of the last 60 years the portrait has hung in the Austrian Gallery
in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna near "The Kiss," another gold-flecked
Klimt masterpiece of the Art Nouveau era. With its sinuous lines and
intricate details, the painting, "Adele Bloch-Bauer I," was commissioned by
the subject's husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. Mrs. Bloch-Bauer died of
meningitis in 1925 at 43. In her will she requested that the painting and
four others by Klimt that the couple owned be left to Austria upon her
husband's death. But when Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, Mr.
Bloch-Bauer fled, leaving all of his possessions behind. The Nazi government
confiscated his property, placed three of the paintings in the Austrian
Gallery and sold the rest.
Before Mr. Bloch-Bauer died, in November 1945, having spent the war years in
Switzerland, he revoked all previous wills and drafted a new one. Since he
and Adele had no children, he left his entire estate to three children of
his brother Gustav: Robert, Luise and Maria.
Of the three, only Maria Altmann is still living: she and her husband,
Fritz, fled Austria during the war and settled in Los Angeles in 1942. She
has a niece and two nephews; a cousin of her brother's second wife also
survives.
In a telephone interview on Friday Mrs. Altmann said she had met Mr. Lauder,
a former American ambassador to Austria, some years ago and that she had
visited the Neue Galerie when it first opened in November 2001.
"Mr. Lauder has a great understanding of Austria and a great love for
Klimt," she said, adding that neither she nor her relatives felt it was
practical for any of them to keep the painting, which depicts her aunt, whom
she remembers from her childhood but who died when she was just 9.
That Mrs. Altmann and her relatives have possession of the painting is a
tale of perseverance and tenacity. After the war the family tried to regain
their stolen possessions, including the paintings, porcelains, palaces and
the sugar company founded by Mr. Bloch-Bauer. Much of the artwork was
divided up among the top Nazis, including Hitler and Hermann Göring;
Reinhardt Hedrick, a Nazi commander, occupied a summer palace owned by Mr.
Bloch-Bauer outside Prague.
The heirs were able to recover some of the works, but the Austrian
authorities ruled that Mrs. Bloch-Bauer's will had essentially bequeathed
the Klimts to Austria. Without access to the original documents, the family
had no case.
By the mid-1980's journalists had begun investigating the restitution claim,
and in 1998 Hubertus Czernin, a Viennese journalist researching the case for
The Boston Globe, was able to find the documents, including Mrs.
Bloch-Bauer's will, which expressed a wish — but did not require — that the
Klimts go to Austria.
In 2000 Mrs. Altmann and the other heirs sued the Austrian government in the
United States. Austria went to court to seek a dismissal of the suit, and
the case wended its way to the United States Supreme Court, which in June
2004 ruled that Mrs. Altmann could sue Austria in the United States.
In January an arbitration tribunal in Austria decided in favor of Mrs.
Altmann and her fellow heirs, awarding them the five paintings. In addition
to "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" they include a second portrait of Adele, from 1911,
and three landscapes: "Beechwood" (1903), "Apple Tree I" (circa 1911) and
"Houses in Utterach on Lake Atter" (1916). After the settlement, Steven
Thomas, the lawyer representing the Bloch-Baur heirs, said he had been
approached by museums and collectors around the world who were interested in
buying one or more of the paintings.
Mrs. Altmann said he had felt especially receptive to Mr. Lauder because
throughout all the years the family was struggling to reclaim the art, he
consistently kept in touch with her, offering to help in any way he could.
"He was incredibly generous and constantly supportive," she said.
In April Mrs. Altmann and her heirs lent the paintings to the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art, where they remain on view through June 30. Then the
five works will travel to the Neue Galerie, where "Gustav Klimt: Five
Paintings From the Collection of Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer" will be on
view from July 13 through Sept. 18.
Mrs. Altmann said that when the gold portrait of her aunt finally hangs in
the Neue Galerie, she will feel that it is finally where it belongs. The
painting, which took Klimt three years to create, shows her aunt regally
posed, with a mysterious gaze, sensuous red lips and her hands twisted near
her face to conceal a deformed finger. He used gold throughout the richly
painted background and in the glistening fabric of Adele's patterned gown.
Art historians and chroniclers of Vienna society in the early 20th century
have suggested that the artist and Ms. Bloch-Bauer were lovers.
"I never saw her smile," Mrs. Altmann recalled in Friday in the interview.
"She was always very serious and wore flowing white dresses and carried a
gold cigarette holder when it was very unusual for women to smoke. She would
have loved to have been a woman of today, to go to university and to get
involved in government."
Mrs. Bloch-Bauer was known for giving frequent parties and surrounding
herself with many of the great artists, politicians and intellectuals of the
day, among them the composer Richard Strauss. "She didn't have teas for
ladies like my mother," Ms. Altmann said. That wasn't down her alley."
She said although Adele was very close to Mrs. Altmann's mother, Therese,
she also seemed to resent her at times because Therese had a house full of
healthy children and Adele had endured three tragic births. (One child died
three days after it was born, and two others died within hours.)
She remembers asking her mother about the rumored love affair between Klimt
and her aunt. "My mother got mad and said, 'How dare you ask such a thing?
It was an intellectual friendship,' " she recalled. "But I think it was very
possible there was a romance."
Of Klimt, who died in 1918, when Ms. Altmann was just a toddler, she
remembers hearing that he often wore a floor-length smock with nothing
underneath.
After Adele died, seven years after Klimt, her husband created a kind of
shrine to her in what had been their bedroom. "The Klimts were always in the
bedroom, but after she died, the bed was removed and there were always fresh
flowers," Mrs. Altmann said.
As for the other four paintings, experts estimate that they are together
worth some $100 million.
The fate of these four has yet to be determined. "I can't decide," Mrs.
Altmann said. "Maybe after they leave the Neue Galerie, they will go to
Christie's. I very much hope they end up in museums. But for now I am just
happy they have a home at the Neue Galerie. It is very deserved. I couldn't
have wished for a better place."
