What you need to know
Barbra Streisand feels nostalgic about a Gustav Klimt painting she once owned.
Streisand lamented her departure from Klimt, days after another work by the late Austrian artist sold for $236 million at a Sotheby’s auction.
“My longtime assistant made me art books that I loved and continued to sell. One of them was a painting of Gustav Klimt’s ‘Miss Lia Munch on her Deathbed’ that I bought in 1969 for $17,000, which seemed like a lot of money at the time,” Streisand, 83, wrote in an Instagram post on Thursday, Nov. 20.
“I sold this book in 1998 because I was interested in Frank Lloyd Wright and the Arts & Crafts movement. Oh, how I regret selling her. As the book title says, ‘Never sell the art you love,'” she concluded her caption.
Streisand’s post included a black-and-white photo of her sitting next to the painting.
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Two days before the “Evergreen” singer reminisced about the work, New York auction house Sotheby’s sold Klimt’s “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” for an eye-popping nine-figure sum, making it the second most expensive piece of art ever sold at auction, according to ARTnews, the New York Times and the BBC.
This price also set a record for the highest price paid for Klimt.
The painting belonged to the late billionaire cosmetics heir and art collector Leonard A. Lauder, who also owned works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Ewald Munch and others.
The National Gallery of Canada, where the painting was on loan for many years, has a history of the work.
According to an article on the museum’s website, “Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, painted over a three-year period from 1914 to 1916, is a striking and dazzling painting that speaks to the power, elegance and confidence of early 20th century Vienna’s high society.”
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“Those qualities are revealed here both explicitly and more subtly, for example in the model’s expression of calm confidence and the semi-hidden symbols surrounding the central figure.”
Remarkably, this painting, and the family’s relationship with Klimt, who painted several of Lederer, helped save Elisabeth’s life after the Nazis annexed Austria in the 1930s, according to the article.
Elisabeth, a Jew, “spread the story that Klimt, a non-Jew who died in 1918, was her real father… Elisabeth’s mother, Shelena, willingly signed an affidavit proving Klimt’s paternity in order to save her daughter. The plan worked, and the Nazi regime provided Elisabeth with documents showing that she was a descendant of Klimt.”
“Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” was originally scheduled to sell for about $150 million, PEOPLE previously reported.
