Year 1912 Artist Gustav Klimt Location Private collection Created 1912 | Medium Oil on canvas Dimensions 1.9 m x 1.2 m Period Art Nouveau Genre Portrait | |
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Similar Gustav Klimt artwork, Art Nouveau artwork, Oil paintings | ||
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II is a 1912 painting by Gustav Klimt.
Adele Bloch-Bauer (1881–1925) was a refined art-loving Viennese salon lady, a patron and close friend of Gustav Klimt.
Ownership
Adele Bloch-Bauer was the wife of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a wealthy industrialist who sponsored the arts and supported Gustav Klimt. Adele Bloch-Bauer was the only model to be painted twice by Klimt; she also appeared in the much more famous Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. Adele's portraits had hung in the family home prior to their seizure by the Nazis during World War II. The Austrian museum where they resided after the war was reluctant to return them to their rightful owners, hence a protracted court battle in the United States and in Austria (see Republic of Austria v. Altmann) ensued, which resulted in five Gustav Klimt paintings being returned to Maria Altmann, the niece of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, in January 2006.
In November 2006, Christie's auction house sold Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II at auction for almost $88 million, the fourth-highest priced piece of art at auction at the time. The buyer was Oprah Winfrey.
In the fall of 2014, Adele Bloch-Bauer II was given as a special long-term loan to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. During the summer of 2016, Oprah Winfrey sold it to an unidentified Chinese buyer for $150 million. The painting was temporarily lent to Neue Galerie for the exhibition “Klimt and the Women of Vienna’s Golden Age, 1900–1918.” It will appear in the Chinese buyer’s private museum after September 2017.