The Portrait Gertrud Loew – Auction

Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Gertrud Loew (1902) went up for auction at Sotheby’s in London on June 24, 2026—exactly eleven years after it was first auctioned.
While the portrait had fetched 24.8 million pounds in 2015, that amount was surpassed by over 10 million in 2026: the buyer paid 36.2 million pounds (approximately 42 million euros) for the portrait of Gertrud Loew-Felsövanyi, who was 19 at the time.

Commissioned from Klimt in 1902 by the family of the subject, the painting is considered a significant work within his oeuvre and underscores his popularity as a portraitist of Vienna’s upper class at the turn of the century.
Dr. Anton Loew, the father of the subject, was chief physician at the Wiener Sanatorium Dr. Anton Loew, an art patron, and closely associated with the Vienna Secession. As an important and respected figure in Viennese society, it is not surprising that the commission came from the painter who was the most sought-after in Vienna at the time. The painting impressively showcases Klimt’s talent and unmistakable aesthetic style, which around 1900 was expressed through an almost monochromatic color palette and transformed his portraits into elegant, atmospheric depictions.

A dossier on the provenance research of the portrait was reviewed by an independent panel and published in 2014, stating that while the particulars of the sale of the artwork could not be reconstructed, it is to be presumed that the painting was purchased by Gustav Ucicky during the Nazi era. The panel found that the painting would have to be restituted were the Austrian Federal Art Restitution Law to apply. In the autumn of 2014 the Klimt Foundation, as a private institution and in keeping with its charter, came to a voluntary and balanced, just and fair solution with the Felsöványi family in accordance with the Washington Principles of 3rd Dec. 1998.

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