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Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

Oil, silver, and gold on canvas by Gustav Klimt, 1907. A full-length seated portrait of Viennese socialite Adele Bloch-Bauer (1881–1925), commissioned by her husband Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer c. 1903. The sitter and her dress dissolve into a shimmering field of golden Byzantine mosaic ornament, with only the face, neck, and hands rendered naturalistically. The centrepiece of Klimt's Golden Phase and widely regarded as one of the greatest paintings of the 20th century. Seized by the Nazis after the 1938 Anschluss and held by the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere for 65 years, the painting was restituted to the Bloch-Bauer heirs in 2006 following a landmark US Supreme Court case (Republic of Austria v. Altmann) and sold to Ronald S. Lauder for $135,000,000 — then the highest price ever paid for a painting.

Scholarly Significance

Anchor the Vienna Secession cluster with Klimt's most iconic work. Primary vehicle for the repatriation custody-chain pattern, the Nazi-loot iconological layer, and the Austrian-Jewish patronage network. Q10 smoke-test target.

Notes

  • ·The only sitter Klimt painted twice: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912, currently Oprah Winfrey collection).
  • ·Klimt's preparatory studies for this portrait are extensive: over 100 drawings document the transition from naturalistic to ornamental approach.
  • ·The gold leaf technique references Klimt's training in mosaic and decorative arts at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule.
  • ·Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer survived the war in Switzerland and died in Zurich in 1945. He disinherited Austrian institutions in his will after the seizures.
  • ·Maria Altmann (1916–2011), Ferdinand's niece, pursued the legal case from 1998 to 2006 against Austrian resistance. Her story is the basis for the 2015 film 'Woman in Gold' (dir. Simon Curtis; Helen Mirren as Altmann).
  • ·$135M sale price (June 2006) held the record as the highest price ever paid for a painting until surpassed by Picasso's Garçon à la pipe ($104M, 2004 — actually lower) — more precisely, it broke all prior records. It was surpassed by Pollock's No. 5, 1948 ($140M, November 2006) five months later.
  • ·Wikidata QID: Q1096048