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G ustav Klimt’s vibrant Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer) (1914-16) portrays the daughter of the artist’s most important patrons. Seized by Nazis, the painting survived the war to be restituted to Erich Lederer, Elisabeth’s brother, in 1948. On Tuesday, November 18, 2025, it appeared for the first time at auction, where it sold for a total of $236.4 million as a part of The Leonard A. Lauder Collection. The standout lot of Lauder’s two-auction white-glove collection, Klimt’s magisterial painting ultimately comprised over 20% of The New York Sales outstanding $1.17 billion results.
The portrait’s sale doubled the Viennese artist’s $108.8 million auction record and simultaneously became the highest price of any work of modern art ever sold at an auction. The bidding, which started at $130 million by Chairman and Head Auctioneer Oliver Barker, came down to two phone bidders, who pushed the price higher in a tight standoff while the audience held their breath. One client spoke with specialist David Galperin and the other with specialist Julian Dawes. The auction closed 20 minutes later with Dawes’ bidder, taking its place as the most valuable work by Klimt ever sold, the most valuable work of art ever sold by Sotheby’s and the second most valuable work of art ever sold at auction.
Two nights later, the Exquisite Corpus auction introduced one of the most significant private Surrealist art collections and realized $98 million. At the center of the collection, Frida Kahlo’s El sueño (La cama) (1940), was the top lot at $55 million. The painting broke the record of $44 million for a female artist’s work and Kahlo’s previous record of $34.9 million. The Mexican artist’s self-portrait and symbol of her resilience and heritage was last purchased through Sotheby’s for $51,000 in 1980 (approximately $200,519 today), achieving an extraordinary return over 45 years. It is one of the few paintings available on the international market after Mexico declared her artworks as artistic monuments in 1984.
A 1932 Dorothea Tanning painting, Interior With Sudden Joy, also achieved a record price of $3.4 million. Their works appeared alongside titans of Surrealism René Magritte (five works at $11.5 million) and Salvador Dalí (two works at $4.7 million), as well as visionary women Surrealists Kay Sage (two works at $4 million), Remedios Varo ($952,500) and Valentine Hugo ($825,500).
The New York Sales cumulatively reached $1.17 billion in revenue, making it the second highest in company history following the November 2021 edition. It was an extraordinary debut for Sotheby’s new global headquarters: the iconic Breuer building on Madison Avenue and the former home of the Whitney Museum of Art, where Leonard A. Lauder formerly served as Chairman. As CEO Charles F. Stewart noted, it was fitting that the new building was inaugurated by a collector whose generosity is woven into Breuer’s history.
Also from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, Agnes Martin’s The Garden surpassed estimates to $17.6 million after a 10-minute bidding war. The painting last appeared publicly at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1992 retrospective at the Breuer – the same building where it was just sold.
Alongside the portrait, two of Klimt’s Austrian landscapes, Blumenwiese (Blooming Meadow) (1908) and Waldabhang bei Unterach am Attersee (Forest Slope in Unterach on the Attersee) (1916), were sold for a combined $154.3 million. A suite of six Henri Matisse bronzes sold above estimate at a combined total of $49 million, led by Figure décorative, which sold at $16.7 million. Following closely behind, La Serpentine sold above its high estimate at $16.7 million. At $11.2 million, Vincent Van Gogh’s Le Semeur dans un champ de blé au soleil couchant set a record as the highest price ever achieved at auction for a work by the artist executed purely in pen and ink.
The Now and Contemporary Evening and Day sales featured groundbreaking works from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The star of the evening sale, directed by expert auctioneer Phyllis Kao, was America (2016), an 18-karat-gold, functioning toilet by Maurizio Cattelan, which sold for $12.1 million. The 223-pound artwork was formerly installed in the Guggenheim Museum’s bathroom and is a satirical take on commerce and contemporary art, according to Cattelan. Sotheby’s tied the opening bid to the market value of its weight gold: $10 million.
On Thursday night, The Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection presented 50 years of carefully assembled Modern and Impressionist art. It featured 37 works, which were all sold for a total of $109.5 million. At the center of the collection was Van Gogh’s Piles de romans parisiens et roses dans une verre (Romans parisiens) (1887), sold for $62.7 million and setting a record for a still life by the artist. The painting reflects van Gogh’s love of books, a passion that he once described “as sacred as the love of Rembrandt” in a letter to his brother, Theo, in 1880. Van Gogh made only nine still lifes of books, and just two remain privately owned.
Equally captivating was Henri Matisse’s Leda et le cygne (1945), a 6-foot triptych that sold for $10.4 million. The work was commissioned by Argentine diplomat Marcelo Fernandez Anchorena and his wife, Hortensia, for their Paris residence. Matisse later recalled that when his friend and rival Pablo Picasso visited in 1945, the Spanish artist exclaimed, “I want to see Matisse’s door. All Paris is holding its breath!” Over the next three years, Matisse produced about 29 interpretations of the Greek myth in which Zeus, disguised as a swan, seduces a Spartan queen.
Other notable works from the collection include Max Beckmann’s Der Wels (Catfish) ($9.2 million), an allegorical masterpiece from his time in Paris; Paul Gauguin’s La Maison de Pen du, gardeuse de vache ($4.9 million), an important Pont-Aven canvas; and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Hallesches Tor, Berlin (Halle Gate, Berlin) ($2.5 million), one of the largest of his Berlin cityscapes still in private hands.
The Modern Evening and Day sales focused on 19th- and 20th-century artists who pioneered new movements in the last 150 years. Among the highlights was Rene Magritte’s Le Jockey perdu (1942) from The Matthew and Carolyn Bucksbaum Collection, sold for $12.3 million.
As art journalist Julie Belcove reports: “No doubt Sotheby’s and the estate hope bidders will heed the advice Lauder once told me his legendary mother, Estée, gave him: ‘You only regret what you do not buy.’”
