A 1907 Gustav Klimt portrait of Vienna aristocrat Adele Bloch-Bauer looted by the Nazis and recently returned to a Los Angeles woman and her relatives has been sold to a small New York museum for the highest known price ever paid for a painting.
The sale of "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" dashes hopes that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art -- which has been displaying the work and four other Klimts since April 4 -- might acquire the picture itself. Cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder bought the painting on behalf of the museum he founded, the Neue Galerie.
While the exact sales price remains unclear, the Los Angeles attorney representing Maria Altmann and four other heirs said Sunday that Lauder paid the highest known price for a painting. Until now, the high-water mark was $104.1 million, paid in 2004 by an unnamed auction bidder at Sotheby's for Picasso's "Boy With a Pipe." The New York Times, which first reported the sale of the Klimt, said the work sold for $135 million.
It was only in January, after the paintings spent decades on display at Austria's national museum, that an Austrian court decision gave the five Klimts back to the heirs of Adele Bloch-Bauer, including Altmann, 90, of Cheviot Hills.
"It was important to the heirs and to my Aunt Adele that her painting be displayed in a museum," Altmann said. "We chose a museum that is a bridge between Europe and the United States."
The five paintings' collective worth had been estimated at as much as $300 million, which made guessing their destination a popular parlor game from Brentwood to Vienna. Even with the favorite painting sold, experts said the four other works -- a second portrait of Bloch-Bauer and three landscapes -- could together fetch $100 million to $150 million.
The heirs' representative, Los Angeles attorney Steve Thomas, said Sunday that the family plans to sell their four other Klimt canvases but hasn't finalized any deals. He declined to confirm or deny the reported $135-million sale figure.
To close this complex deal, said Thomas, he ultimately needed a contract of more than 15 pages. He said he, Lauder and Lauder's representatives negotiated for many weeks before a deal was struck several weeks ago. Along with the purchase of the "gold portrait," the Bloch-Bauer heirs and the Neue Galerie agreed to an exhibition of all five of the Klimts from July 13 through Sept. 18.
