Klimt’s Blumenwiese Brings in $86 M. at Sotheby’s Lauder Sale, Marking Artist’s Second Most Expensive Landscape

Gustav Klimt’s Blumenwiese (Blooming Meadow)—a jewel-like 1908 landscape painted during one of the artist’s summer retreats to Austria s Lake Attersee—sold for $86 million (inclusive of fees) tonight at Sotheby’s, landing a few million above its estimate of north of $80 million. The painting was offered as part of the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, a once-in-a-generation consignment that includes multiple masterworks by Klimt, as well as ones by Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch, and Agnes Martin.

Lauder purchased Blumenwiese in 1985, one of several acquisitions that reflected his long fascination with Viennese modernism and the artist’s Attersee period. Blumenwiese is among Klimt’s most innovative landscapes, executed on a square canvas and abandoning traditional horizon lines in favor of a mosaic-like field of color that has drawn comparisons to the late work of Claude Monet, produced around the same time.Landscapes by Klimt seldom appear at auction—and when they do, they typically draw intense competition.

The price is the second highest for Klimt landscape, with that record still standing strong at $104.5 million, set by Birch Forest, once owned Paul Allen, in 2022. The strong result for Blumenwiese comes at a moment when the upper end of the market has contracted sharply: works above $10 million saw a 39 percent decline last year, according to a report published Art Basel and UBS.For Lauder, the painting was part of a broader collecting philosophy that prized both aesthetic rigor and historical importance.

The work’s early provenance—including its ownership by Hugo and Broncia Koller and its likely appearance at the 1910 Venice Biennale—only added to its appeal. If Klimt s Elisabeth Lederer portrait was the night’s headline, Blumenwiese offered a reminder that Klimt’s landscapes can command drama of their own.