NY museum pays over €100m for Klimt portrait

AN oil and gold-encrusted portrait by Gustav Klimt has been purchased for a record-breaking amount by a New York museum.

The 1907 portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer — one of the most recognisable of the 20th century — was sold by Bloch-Bauer’s niece, Maria Altmann and her family, her lawyer Steven Thomas said.

The painting had been the focus of a battle between the Austrian government and the subject’s Los Angeles-based niece.

Mr Thomas refused to disclose the price, but said it eclipsed the previous record of $104.1m paid at auction for Picasso’s 1905 Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice).

The New York Times reported the portrait sold for $135m (€107.5m).

The Klimt painting will now be displayed at the Neue Galerie, a New York museum of German and Austrian art co-founded by cosmetics mogul Ronald Lauder, who Mr Thomas said was instrumental in the deal.

“It was important for the heirs and for my aunt Adele that her work be displayed in a museum,” Ms Altmann said in a statement.

Ms Altmann, 90, was a newlywed when she watched the Nazis seize power in 1938 and steal the portrait and four other Klimt works from her aunt and uncle’s home.

Since then, the portrait has hung mostly in the Austrian Gallery Belvedere in Vienna, near Klimt’s famous painting The Kiss.

She had figured she had no hope of recovering the family collection until a 1998 law in Austria required museums to return art stolen by the Nazis.

She spent several years fighting the Austrian government to recover her family’s collection. She wanted to ensure the art would remain in public view.