Klimt’s late masterpiece and Lucian Freud’s portrait of Penny Guinness in Sotheby’s June sales

One of the most valuable works of art ever to be offered at auction in Europe is Gustav Klimt’s Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan), which is expected to realise £65 million (€75.9 million) at a Sotheby’s sale in London on June 27th.

The painting, of an unidentified woman in a Chinese-influenced backdrop with dragons and lotus blossoms, last sold at auction in New York in 1994 for $11.6 million.

The late masterpiece by the Austrian artist was the last portrait he completed before his death. It still stood on an easel in his studio when he suffered a stroke and pneumonia due to his infection with the worldwide flu epidemic in 1918, which claimed more than 21 million people worldwide.

In 1894, the artist was commissioned to create three paintings for the ceiling of the Great Hall at the University of Vienna. However the trio, Philosophy, Medicine and Jurisprudence, were criticised – deemed too radical and called pornographic – as they were more overtly sexual than his other works. Klimt refused any further public commissions after the outcry against these works. They were never displayed on the ceiling and were destroyed when German forces burned the Schloss Immendorf castle in 1945.

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Aged just 55 when he died, he had fathered at least 14 children, and was known for wearing long robes with nothing underneath. This work, Dame mit Fächer, is considered one of his finest, as it was created in his prime, when he was deemed to be among the most celebrated portrait artists in Europe. It was “clearly influenced by his contemporaries Van Gogh, Matisse and Gauguin”, according to catalogue notes.

A key figure in artistic modernism, known for his daring art nouveau work, Klimt also sits in the select pantheon of artists to have achieved over $100 million at auction. His Birch Forest sold as part of the Paul G Allen collection in 2022 for $104.6 million (€95.8 million).

Another important work coming up for sale through Sotheby’s is Night Interior by Lucian Freud, which will also be offered at auction on June 27th.

Freud’s meditative portrait of Penny Cuthbertson includes his own presence, and it was painted in his innermost sanctum – his studio in Paddington. Listed at £8 million-£12 million (€9.3 million-€13.97 millions), it depicts the haphazard presence of his boots and overcoat stuffed into a narrow wardrobe, while reflections in the window are thought to be him with his paintbrush.

The work, described as “tender, intimate and contemplative”, centres about the sitter, Penny Cuthbertson, and is one of seven Freud painted of her during his lifetime. She was the second wife of Anglo-Irish author of Georgian art and architecture, Desmond Guinness.

She and Freud first met at a party in the late 1960s, and soon after he asked her to sit for him, creating the very first portraits of her in 1966 and a further three in 1968, before embarking on this final work between 1968 and 1970.

[ Lucian Freud portrait of Guinness heir as a boy sells for €6.7m ]

Night Interior was once part of the collection of Guinness heir Garech Browne, the late aristocrat who resided at Luggala, Co Wicklow. It was subsequently owned by Charles Saatchi, the Iraqi-British businessman and co-founder of advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, before the current owner.

The painting also has an illustrious exhibition history: it was a formative part of Freud’s first big UK travelling retrospective, which began at the Hayward Gallery, London, in 1974. It was also included in the seminal show Lucian Freud, L’Atelier, at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, in 2010, and six years later at the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s loan exhibition Lucian Freud (2016-2018).

On June 28th in London at its Modern British Art sale, Sotheby’s will auction A Shining Palace by William Leech. The painting “belongs to [the] most progressive and accomplished period of his career between 1903 and 1919 when he was engaged in a sustained quest for trying to evolve sunlight and reflections”, according to the catalogue notes. Listed with an estimate of £50,000-£70,000 (€58,200-€81,480), it marks the time the artist – who was born on Parnell Square in 1881 – left Ireland to experience artistic developments on the Continent.

Of further Irish interest in this sale is a pencil and watercolour, Yacht Race by William Orpen, of a family on the clifftop at Howth Head (£90,000-£130,000). The work was executed in or around 1913, when Orpen’s summer ritual from 1909 had been to rent Arthur Bellingham’s house known as The Cliffs overlooking the majestic sweep of Dublin Bay for the month of August. There he would be joined by his wife, Grace, and daughters Mary and Kit, along with other members of his family. Since the Howth holiday followed his summer term residency at the Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin friends and students sometimes joined the party. These convivial gatherings became subjects for drawings and paintings during “long, lovely, never-to-be-forgotten summer days”, as described by Orpen’s brother Richard. sothebys.com