The Most Expensive Works by Gustav Klimt Sold at Auction

Landhaus am Attersee (Country House by the Attersee) depicts the forester’s house at the entrance to Austria’s Weißenbach Valley, where Gustav Klimt stayed during his summers on the southern shore of Lake Attersee. In this secluded setting, near members of the Flöge family—including his companion Emilie Flöge—the artist refined his mature approach to landscape painting. With oil on canvas, the artist transformed the humble building and surrounding vegetation into a richly patterned composition of vibrant foliage, vivid color, and mosaic-like brushwork. Unlike his meticulously prepared portraits, Klimt’s landscapes were executed with few preparatory studies, lending them a greater sense of immediacy and spontaneity.

Created during the final phase of Klimt’s Attersee period, the work reflects his fascination with nature as a space of visual intensity. Offered at Sotheby’s New York on November 5, 2003, with an estimate of $18–25 million, the painting achieved $29.1 million. The result confirmed the growing appreciation of Klimt’s landscapes, now regarded as some of the artist’s most personal and innovative achievements.

Klimt’s Apple Tree I is a luminous example of his mature landscapes, depicting a single apple tree rising above a dense carpet of flowers and foliage. This oil on canvas is distinguished by its vibrant palette, shimmering brushwork, and richly decorative surface, reflecting Klimt’s interest in nature during his summers at Lake Attersee and the influence of Vincent van Gogh’s expressive approach to color and movement.

First exhibited at the Große Kunstausstellung in Dresden in 1912, the work demonstrates Klimt’s ability to turn a simple natural motif into a striking decorative composition. Its provenance includes ownership by Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer and its restitution to their heirs in 2006. Offered at Christie’s New York with an estimate of $15–25 million, Apple Tree I sold for $33 million on November 9 of that same year. The sale underscored the enduring appeal of Klimt’s garden landscapes.

Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II is an oil on canvas depicting the eponymous Viennese socialite and salonnière, who was one of Klimt’s most important patrons and the only sitter to whom he devoted two paintings. The first, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907), is now held by the Neue Galerie New York. The second, along with works such as Apple Tree I (see above), belonged to the Bloch-Bauer family collection that was looted by Nazi authorities after the annexation of Austria in 1938. After a prolonged legal battle, these paintings were returned in 2006 to Maria Altmann and the other heirs of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer in a landmark restitution case.

On November 8 of that year, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II was sold at Christie’s New York as part of an Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale. The painting achieved $87.9 million, setting a new auction record for Klimt at the time. In 2016 the work was sold privately by its owner, Oprah Winfrey, who had purchased it at Christie’s, to an anonymous Chinese buyer for a reported $150 million, making it one of the most significant private art transactions of the decade.

“I get up early in the morning, usually around 6 am, sometimes earlier, sometimes later. If I get up and the weather is fine, I go into the nearby forest. I am painting a small beech grove, mixed with a few conifers,” wrote Klimt in a letter to M. Zimmerman in August 1903. It was during his summers in Litzlberg, on the shores of Lake Attersee, that the artist developed his profound connection with the natural world. In Birch Forest (Buchenwald), he captured a secluded grove with precision. The elegant silver trunks rise like “columns in a cathedral created by nature.” Their intricate patterns contrast with the deep green foliage, creating a richly textured surface.

Landscape occupied a significant place in Klimt’s mature oeuvre, reflecting his search for harmony and visual rhythm. With each tree trunk bearing its own unique markings, the painting shows extreme attention to detail. Acquired by Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer and confiscated by Nazi forces, Birch Forest was returned to their heirs in 2006 before appearing at Christie’s New York on two occasions. In November 2006, the lot achieved $40.3 million against an estimate of $20−30 million. Returning to the auction house as part of the Paul G. Allen Collection in 2022, it realized $104.6 million, becoming the most expensive Klimt landscape ever sold at auction at the time.

Litzlberg am Attersee depicts the shoreline of Lake Attersee, with houses nestled beneath a densely wooded hillside and a narrow stretch of water in the foreground. Recent scholarship suggests the painting was executed in the second half of 1914. Its vibrant palette, flattened perspective, and densely layered brushwork exemplify Klimt’s decorative approach to landscape. The composition is believed to have drawn in part on a postcard photograph of the lake that the artist sent to his nephew in August 1914.

Acquired directly from Klimt by Viennese patrons Viktor and Paula Zuckerkandl, the painting later entered the collection of Viktor’s sister, Amalie Redlich, a Jewish collector who was dispossessed following the Nazi annexation of Austria and deported to Łódź in 1941. After decades in the collection of the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, the work was restituted to Redlich’s heir in 2011. Later that year, it sold for $40.4 million at Sotheby’s New York, surpassing its $25–30 million estimate. A portion of the sale proceeds was donated to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg to support an extension named in Redlich’s honor.

Klimt’s Bauerngarten (Blumengarten) (Flower Garden), one of the artist’s most celebrated landscapes, presents an informal profusion of poppies, daisies, zinnias, and roses arranged into a riot of color and pattern. This oil on canvas gives a sense of Klimt’s summers at Lake Attersee and of his evolving approach to landscape, rooted in the symbolic ambitions of the Viennese avant-garde. Painted in the garden of the Mayr-Hof, his summer retreat in Litzlberg, the work shows how the natural and decorative worlds converged under his brush.

First exhibited at the Kunstschau in Vienna in 1908, the painting attracted attention for its innovative composition and almost mystical treatment of nature. Offered at Sotheby’s London in 2017 with an estimate in excess of $45 million, Bauerngarten sold for approximately $59.3 million, becoming the most expensive Klimt landscape ever sold at auction at the time. The sale underscored the rarity of major Klimt landscapes appearing on the market, with many works of this caliber held in museum collections.

A young woman clad in a flower-patterned cape sits in a frontal pose against a vivid red background. Her face is rendered with delicate, precise details that contrast with the looser, more expressive brushwork characteristic of Klimt’s late style. The identity of the sitter remains uncertain. Earlier catalogues identified her as Margarethe Constance Lieser (1899−1965), while more recent research has suggested that she may have been either Helene Lieser (1898−1962) or Annie Lieser (1901−1972), daughters of the Viennese patrons Henriette and Justus Lieser. Klimt began working on the portrait in 1917, with the model visiting his studio in Hietzing nine times during April and May of that year. The portrait was unfinished when he died of a stroke on February 6, 1918.

The painting was known to scholars only through a black-and-white photograph, and its whereabouts remained uncertain for decades before it was discovered in Austrian private hands. On April 24, 2024, it was auctioned by Vienna’s im Kinsky, Austria’s second-largest auction house, recognized for its expertise in Klimt’s works and its experience handling restitution-related art sales. Portrait of Fräulein Lieser sold for approximately $41 million including fees, setting a record as the highest price ever achieved for an artwork at auction in Austria. The sale was conducted on behalf of the owners at the time and the legal successors of the Liester family, following an agreement based on the 1998 Washington Principles. The work was purchased by Patti Wong & Associates for an anonymous buyer.

Dame mit Fächer is thought to be the last portrait Klimt worked on before his death in 1918; it was still on the easel in his Vienna studio at the time of his passing. The work represents the culmination of the artist’s late portraiture, combining the human presence of the unidentified sitter with the rich patterns and decorative experimentation that defined his last years. Returning to the square format he first employed in Portrait of Sonja Knips (1898), Klimt placed the figure at the center of the composition and surrounded her with motifs drawn from Asian art, including the phoenix and lotus blossoms. The sitter’s elaborate robe also evokes Klimt’s long-standing interest in textiles and fashion, an area closely connected to his companion Emilie Flöge, an influential Viennese fashion designer.

At Sotheby’s London in June 2023, Dame mit Fächer carried an estimate of more than £65 million ($80 million) and was backed by a third-party guarantee. The painting was hammered in at $93.5 million, reaching $108.4 million with fees and establishing a new auction record for Klimt. The result surpassed the previous record of $104.6 million held by Birch Forest, highlighting the extraordinary demand for Klimt’s late masterpieces in the international market.

In this painting of the meadows surrounding Lake Attersee, Klimt moves away from a traditional landscape format to offer a dazzling carpet of wildflowers—bellflowers buttercups, daisies, cornflowers, clover, and dandelions—that fills the canvas, Here, the horizonless view, square composition, and flattened pictorial space show the influence of late Claude Monet, Japanese art, and emerging Modernist photography.

Executed likely in the summer of 1908, Blumenwiese represents a pivotal moment in Klimt’s landscape painting, when he pushed the genre toward greater abstraction. The radical composition was so unconventional that some contemporary critics dismissed Klimt’s style as the work of a “madman.” Its distinguished provenance, including ownership by Austro-Galician painter Broncia Koller-Pinell and her husband, Hugo Koller, further enhances its historical significance. The painting sold at Sotheby’s in 2025 for $86 million (including fees), becoming the second-most expensive Klimt landscape ever auctioned and reaffirming its rarity and enduring appeal among collectors.

Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914−16) exemplifies Klimt’s mature portrait style, where realism and decoration meet seamlessly. The subject emerges from an elaborate costume that blurs the boundary between figure and background. Completed after nearly three years of revisions, the painting demonstrates Klimt’s meticulous working process and extraordinary feeling for ornamentation.

Commissioned by the Lederer family, among Klimt’s most important patrons, the painting is one of only two full-length portraits by the artist remaining in private hands. It survived Nazi confiscation during the Second World War and was restituted in 1948. Its provenance, later including a time in the collection of Leonard A. Lauder, makes it one of Klimt’s most significant surviving mature portraits. Estimated at $150 million, the painting was the centerpiece of Sotheby’s November 2025 sales. After a dramatic 20-minute contest between two telephone bidders, it realized $236.4 million (including fees), eclipsing Klimt’s previous record and becoming the second-most expensive work ever sold at auction, behind Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi.