The “Lost” Klimt: Portrait of Fraulein Lieser, in the image of the Auctionhaus im Kinsky exhibition hall … [+]
It was an exciting journey through the eighteen lots in the rooms of the Auktionshaus im Kinsky at the Kinsky Palais in Vienna this afternoon, as the star lot, Lot 19, Gustav Klimt's 1917-8 “Bildnis Fräulein Lieser” or Portrait of Fräulein Lieser, took out exactly $30,051,789, plus commissions and fees. The price was 50K north of their estimate and quite respectable for the artist and his wares, and the winning bid was in the room, not online or over the phone. To his credit, the money quickly came to a head of sorts in the four long minutes of bidding.
But in the last two minutes of the bidding, some hesitation visibly hit the phone lines, the Internet and the paddles in the room at the same time, the action slowed and the clock began to drag. Despite his vigorous go round, now in German and English, to give potential bidders outside the room a greater opportunity to increase speed and increase the price in any increment, the auctioneer was unable to change the price of this latest pallet support of $30 million. .
Good omens, especially regarding the enduring appetite for anything Klimt, abounded early in the sale. Things went very well with four studies, pencil drawings for several famous oils, they went into the low $70.00s. Lot 13, Klimt's picture of Marie Kerner von Marilaun as a bride, fetched well north of $200,000. Moments earlier, lot 10, an Egon Schiele watercolor portrait of his sister Gertrude, with the model's smoldering gaze at the painter providing a charged center to the piece, fetched well north of $600,000. The sale was quick, and it was like that up and down the hill.
But hanging somewhere, or within, the hesitation among buyers during the sale of the most emotional “Bildnis Fräulein Lieser” was the lingering suspicion that, had the hard-living painter lived to physically sign the thing, a classic indication of Klimt that he thought he was close enough to the end of his meticulous work on any of his pieces to claim sitability, then the price would have jumped far north of what it was. He had clearly wanted, in his obsessive way, to keep working on it. But Klimt's own body, in 1918, took a different path.
