Tea at Trianon: 'Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer'

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, September 26, 2025

'Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer'

A painting of a young white woman with dark hair, standing in a long, lacy white gown with her hands clasped, set against a colorful background of stylized figures, horses, and decorative patterns in shades of blue, orange, and red.

From ArtNet:

The full-length portrait features a striking young woman with dark hair and pale skin, clad in a flowing, gauzy white dress, and patterned blue robe. In an unusual touch, the background features an array of small Chinese figures, dressed in traditional attire—perhaps some kind of wallhanging—and an orange and pink patterned rug.

The work comes from the collection of the late cosmetics magnate Leonard Lauder, of Estée Lauder Companies, who died in June at age 92. The sale of his personal collection—minus $1 billion-worth of Cubist works donated to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art—will inaugurate the new Sotheby’s New York flagship at the Breuer Building, formerly owned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, with an evening sale on November 18.

The Elisabeth Lederer painting was most recently on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Before that, Lauder lent the canvas to New York’s Neue Galerie—founded by Lauder’s younger brother, Ronald Lauder—in 2016 for “Klimt and the Women of Vienna’s Golden Age, 1900–1918,” a stunning show of the artist’s society portraits of women. (Both loans were arranged anonymously.)
The sale could obliterate the current auction record for the great Austrian Secessionist master. It stands at £85.3 million ($108.4 million) for the 2023 sale of Dame mit Fächer (Lady With a Fan), at Sotheby’s London, according to the Artnet Price Database. It is also the most expensive work of art sold at auction in Europe. (Klimt works have sold for more privately, like the 1912 work Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II, which Oprah Winfrey sold for $150 million in 2016; her initial purchase of it for $87.9 million at Christie’s in 2006 was then a record for the artist.)

But Elisabeth Lederer’s price tag just might be the least interesting thing about it. Even without the sparkle of Klimt’s gold leaf-embellished The Kiss (1907–08) or Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907), it is strikingly beautiful—and its backstory is nothing short of fascinating. Here are three things you should know about the historic artwork. (Read more.)