In 1969, Barbra Streisand bought a Klimt painting for $17,000. In 1998, she sold it and moved on. Now, a Klimt has just broken records at $236.4 million, and Barbra has gone public with her regret.
Barbra’s story is the quiet, painful echo of that sale. She bought her own Klimt in 1969 for $17,000 and sold it in 1998 when her taste in art changed. Today, works similar to Klimt’s are worth hundreds of millions. In her post, she admits, “Oh how I regret selling her.”
It was painted in Vienna more than 100 years ago, survived the Nazi years, and even helped its real-life sitter avoid deportation after a desperate “family story” convinced officials to let her stay. Now it is the most expensive modern artwork ever sold at auction and the second most expensive artwork ever sold, behind Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi.
Barbra Streisand’s $100 Million Art Regret: The Klimt She Let Go!
Now you know about the exact moment Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer climbed to 236.4 million dollars after a 20-minute bidding war between six bidders, inside Sotheby’s new New York headquarters.
Watching this right after reading Barbra’s regret gives the story a different weight. You are seeing the kind of sale that made her look back at the Klimt she bought for 17,000 dollars and think, “I should never have let her go.”
Gustav Klimt painting sells for record-breaking $236.4m at auction
The story of “Woman in Gold” shows that Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer is not a one-off miracle, but part of a long chain of stolen, fought-over, then record-breaking Klimts. This next chapter walks you through that history in simple terms, from gold leaf and courtrooms to sky-high price tags.