Lady with a Fan

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About Lady with a Fan

A woman raises her head and meets the world from within a field of intense colour. Her shoulder and upper chest are bare. A painted fan covers one breast; a loose patterned robe falls around the rest of her body. Behind her, birds and lotus flowers spread across a yellow ground so densely that wallpaper, clothing and flesh seem to press into the same shallow space.

Gustav Klimt painted Dame mit Fächer—Lady with a Fan—in 1917–18. The sitter is unknown, and the portrait was not commissioned as the likeness of a named patron. It remained in his studio when he suffered a stroke in January 1918 and died the following month. Belvedere calls it almost complete; the Gustav Klimt Database classifies it as unfinished. The most accurate public description is therefore a nearly completed late painting that Klimt did not finally resolve.^[3][5]

The object is a square oil on canvas measuring 100.2 by 100.2 centimetres. There is no metal leaf in its documented medium. Its brilliance comes from paint: yellow, turquoise, pink, orange, purple, green and patterned strokes rather than a return to the literal gold of Klimt's earlier phase.^[1][3]

Its afterlife is unusually visible. It moved through the Böhler family, Rudolf Leopold, Serge Sabarsky and Wendell Cherry, appeared at Sotheby's in 1994, returned to Vienna as a temporary Belvedere loan in 2021–22, and sold in London on 27 June 2023. The buyer and present location remain private.^[1][3]

At a Glance

• ArtistGustav Klimt
• German titleDame mit Fächer
• English titleLady with a Fan
• Date1917–18^[1]
• MediumOil on canvas^[1]
• Dimensions100.2 × 100.2 centimetres^[1]
• SubjectAn unidentified woman in a patterned robe holding a fan
• Commission statusNot commissioned as a named sitter's portrait; Erwin Böhler was nevertheless a documented intended buyer^[3][5]
• Completion statusNearly complete but not finally resolved when Klimt died^[3][5]
• First public exhibitionVienna Kunstschau, 1920, room 9, no. 42, under the title Bildnis (Portrait)^[1]
• Historical alternate labelTänzerin (Dancer) in a 1920–21 publication; not proof of the sitter's profession^[1]
• Recent museum displayTemporary Belvedere loan, 25 March 2021–13 February 2022^[3][4]
• Current statusPrivate collection after the 27 June 2023 Sotheby's sale; buyer and location undisclosed^[1][2]

An Unnamed Woman, Not an Empty Type

No secure name survives for the sitter. Sotheby's calls her unnamed, and Belvedere describes her as an unidentified model. The absence of identity should not be filled with Emilie Flöge, a society patron or a speculative dancer.^[1][4]

Nor does anonymity make the figure generic. Her raised chin, turned head, long neck, exposed skin and outward gaze form a highly particular presence. Klimt has not painted a neutral mannequin for the surrounding patterns.

Belvedere interprets her look as self-confident and the encounter as seductive.^[3][4] These words help identify the force of her address, but they remain interpretations of pose and expression. A painting cannot document a sitter's private state of mind.

The model's anonymity changes the portrait's task. Named society portraits often link likeness to family, patronage and status. Here the viewer has to attend to how a body occupies colour and ornament without relying on biography to explain her.

Portrait, “Viennese Beauty” or Available Picture?

Belvedere calls the subject a variation on Klimt's favoured theme of the “Viennese beauty”. The Klimt Database places it among anonymous late female portraits that could be sold to collectors without beginning as likeness commissions.^[3][5]

These category labels should not erase the individual painting. “Viennese beauty” describes an artistic type shaped by pose, fashion and contemporary ideals; it does not supply the woman's address, class or nationality. “Anonymous portrait” records what is not known about the name, not a lack of observed presence.

The work also differs from a purely private study. Its metre-square scale, elaborate field and documented intended purchaser show that Klimt developed it as a substantial marketable painting. The absence of a named commissioner did not mean absence of economic purpose.

There is a revealing tension here. The woman is made available as an image to a buyer who did not need her biography, yet her direct gaze and bodily specificity resist easy interchangeability. Klimt converts a saleable type into a singular encounter.

That distinction helps prevent two opposite errors: inventing a sitter in order to make the painting important, or treating an unknown model as only a decorative excuse. The portrait's evidence lies in what Klimt constructed from her presence.

Head Raised, Gaze Outward

The woman's head tilts upward and slightly to the side while her eyes engage outward. The angle lengthens the neck and opens a large interval of bare flesh between face, robe and fan.^[3][5]

This is not the immobility of a passport likeness. The pose suggests a moment held inside movement: the head has lifted, the fan has risen, and the robe seems only loosely secured.

Her gaze stabilises that movement. Birds and flowers pull attention across the square, but the face remains an unmistakable centre. The spectator returns to it after following every decorative diversion.

Words such as proud, flirtatious or sovereign can describe the effect of the pose. None should become a fact about the unknown woman's personality. Klimt gives a pictorial attitude, not a recoverable confession.

The Fan as Cover and Display

The fan is positioned where the woman's bare breast would otherwise be fully visible. The Klimt Database calls it a guardian of illusionism and an instrument of concealed eroticism.^[5]

It covers and calls attention at the same time. Without the fan, exposure would be direct; with it, concealment becomes an active event. The accessory marks the very area it hides.

The fan also interrupts anatomical continuity. Face and shoulder remain modelled, but the patterned object turns the centre of the torso into a painted screen. Body becomes image within the image.

Its exact maker, country, material and object history are not documented in the retained institutional evidence. It is safest to describe the painted fan and its visual work rather than convert it into a catalogued accessory that survives outside the canvas.

Bare Skin and Patterned Robe

The robe falls low enough to expose the shoulder, long neck and part of the chest. Klimt contrasts relatively open flesh painting with the garment's active surface.^[3][4]

The Klimt Database observes that, although the woman is shown down towards the hips, the flattening force of the robe makes the image read almost like a bust.^[5] Clothing does not construct a solid torso in depth; it spreads across the canvas.

This creates a bodily paradox. The sitter is strongly present through face and skin, yet her clothed form dissolves into pattern. The portrait moves between volume and flatness without choosing one permanently.

The robe is identified by Belvedere as Chinese.^[4] It should not be relabelled generically as a kimono merely because Japanese art is also relevant to the work. Garment, pose, fan tradition and background motifs have different cultural evidence.

The Square and Its Crop

At 100.2 centimetres on each side, the canvas is almost exactly square.^[1] The format denies the figure the vertical distance associated with a full-length society portrait.

Klimt crops near the hips and brings the sitter close. Head, fan and robe occupy much of the field, while birds and flowers fill what might otherwise read as empty background.

The square also makes the woman and surrounding design compete on equal terms. A tall canvas might subordinate pattern to a standing body; here the background can expand laterally around her face and shoulders.

This is one reason the image feels both portrait-like and decorative. The sitter remains psychologically immediate, but the square refuses to let her inhabit a conventional room with stable floor, furniture and depth.

Pattern Without a Stable Distance

Nothing behind the woman establishes how far away the birds and flowers are meant to be. Their field can read as wallpaper, textile-like surface or freely invented pictorial ground. The absence of floor and horizon keeps the setting close to the canvas.^[4][5]

The robe intensifies this uncertainty. Its marks belong to cloth worn by a body, while the surrounding motifs belong to a separate plane; visually, however, both spread with comparable insistence. Boundaries are recognised and then repeatedly weakened.

Klimt does not eliminate depth altogether. Face, neck and bare shoulder are modelled enough to project, and the fan overlaps the torso. Those pockets of volume make the surrounding flatness more apparent.

The square becomes a testing ground between two systems. Portraiture asks the viewer to meet a person located in space. Pattern insists that the canvas is an arranged surface. Lady with a Fan gains energy because neither system defeats the other.

This is also why a digital thumbnail can be deceptive. It readily conveys the brilliant design, but the metre-square original gives bodily scale to the head, shoulder and fan. Decorative density and physical presence meet more forcefully when dimensions are remembered.

Nearly Complete or Unfinished?

The completion language differs among institutions. Belvedere says the painting was almost finished when Klimt suffered his stroke on 11 January 1918, and its later East Asian presentation calls it nearly completed. The Gustav Klimt Database labels it unfinished.^[3][4][5]

These descriptions need not identify different physical states. They express different catalogue judgements about the same canvas. Substantial figure, robe and background passages are resolved, while Klimt's death makes it impossible to certify that he considered every part final.

“Nearly complete but not fully resolved” preserves both bodies of evidence. It avoids treating every open brushstroke as an accident, yet it does not pretend to know what Klimt might have altered.

The date should likewise remain 1917–18. Belvedere says it was painted during 1917 and almost finished by January 1918; Sotheby's catalogues the execution across both years.^[1][3]

What Can an Unfinished Classification Mean?

Unfinished does not necessarily mean blank, failed or incoherent. In this case, it marks the absence of a final declaration from an artist whose working process ended abruptly. A painting can appear resolved to later viewers while still lacking that historical closure.

Belvedere's “almost finished” wording directs attention to the extensive development already visible. The face, principal bodily relation, fan, robe and dominant background programme are all sufficiently established for the work to sustain close analysis.^[3][4]

The Database's category provides the complementary caution. Klimt was known to rework paintings, and no observer can certify that he would have left every passage unchanged.^[5] Open handling may be intentional late style, preliminary state or some mixture of the two.

The responsible response is not to complete the work imaginatively. We cannot predict an extra motif, altered outline or final glaze. Nor can surface variety be sorted into “finished” and “unfinished” solely according to how polished it looks.

The surviving canvas is the final material state available, but that phrase describes history rather than intention. It is what remained when the working relationship between artist and object was cut short.

What the Studio Photograph Proves

A photograph taken shortly after Klimt's death shows Lady with a Fan and The Bride on separate easels in his studio. The image establishes that both canvases remained in the working environment in 1918.^[3]

It also makes their unequal states visible. The Bride is much more obviously incomplete, while Lady with a Fan appears close to the image known today. That comparison helps explain Belvedere's almost-finished language.

The photograph cannot prove that Klimt worked on both at the same time, that they form a pair or that he touched Lady with a Fan on his final day. Studio presence is not a time-stamped record of every act.

Nor does the easel settle completion by itself. Artists can leave resolved works in studios, revisit apparently finished surfaces or abandon works that look coherent. The photograph is strong evidence of location and comparative state, not access to Klimt's final intention.

Is It Klimt's Last Portrait?

Belvedere and Sotheby's describe Lady with a Fan as Klimt's last portrait.^[2][3] The phrase is useful if it means a major female portrait still in his studio at the end of his life. It becomes misleading if expanded into a claim about the exact last brushstroke he made.

Other canvases, including The Bride and several unfinished portraits, also occupied Klimt's final working period. Their overlapping dates prevent a simple day-by-day finishing order from being reconstructed from titles alone.^[3][5]

The posthumous photograph proves adjacency, not succession. Nor does comparative finish show which easel he approached most recently. A more complete-looking work may have been set aside earlier than a rough one.

“Last portrait” therefore identifies place within the late oeuvre rather than a witnessed final act. The distinction preserves the genuine poignancy of the studio evidence without converting death into unsupported studio mythology.

Not a Named Portrait Commission

Belvedere explicitly states that Lady with a Fan was not a commission but a variation on Klimt's recurring subject of the Viennese beauty.^[3] That distinguishes it from portraits ordered to represent a documented patron.

The Klimt Database adds a separate fact: Klimt's correspondence indicates that he was painting the picture for Erwin Böhler. In July 1917 he asked Böhler for patience, said much of the work had been painted, anticipated completion, and requested an advance.^[5]

There is no contradiction if the two claims are framed precisely. A buyer could be waiting for an available picture without having commissioned a portrait of himself, a relative or a named woman. The letter documents an intended purchaser relationship, not the sitter's identity.

Sotheby's provenance says Erwin Böhler had acquired the painting by 1920.^[1] That later ownership supports the connection without turning Böhler into designer of the pose, costume or background.

Erwin Böhler Waiting for the Picture

The Klimt Database dates the revealing letter to 10 July 1917. Klimt apologised for delay, said he had underestimated the work and hoped to finish by September. He also asked Böhler for an advance of 10,000 crowns.^[5]

This is unusually direct evidence that the painting was not simply discovered by an unrelated collector after the artist's death. Böhler had a financial and expectant relationship to the picture while it was being made.

Yet the letter does not name the woman or describe a portrait commission in which Böhler selected her. It speaks about “the picture”, work remaining and anticipated delivery. That is compatible with Belvedere's conclusion that the portrait itself was not commissioned.^[3][5]

Klimt's hope to finish by September is equally important. It documents an intention at one moment in July, not proof that he considered the work complete in September or never returned to it. The 1918 studio photograph shows that the canvas remained with him.

The advance should not be converted into a final sale price, a completed contract or evidence of full payment. It records money within an ongoing working relationship, whose endpoint was disrupted by Klimt's death.

Was She a Dancer?

The title Tänzerin, or Dancer, appeared beneath an illustration in a 1920–21 publication. Sotheby's records that historical label alongside the 1920 Kunstschau title Bildnis, meaning simply Portrait.^[1]

The dancer proposal may respond to the raised head, long neck and poised bodily presentation. It is a plausible way an early writer understood the figure, not a surviving identification document.

Neither historical title supplies a name. Bildnis emphasises portraiture; Tänzerin proposes a type or profession; Dame mit Fächer identifies the accessory through which the work is now known.

Keeping the titles in sequence prevents a common error: transforming an old caption into proof that a particular dancer sat for Klimt.

Oil, Not Metal Leaf

Sotheby's exact medium is oil on canvas.^[1] Belvedere explains that Klimt had stopped using metal leaf in his final paintings, even though he retained the ambition to make a picture feel precious and object-like.^[3]

The yellow background must therefore not be called gold leaf. Colour can look golden without being metallic, especially in photographs or screens that compress surface differences.

Paint produces brilliance through hue, contrast and handling. Turquoise, pink, yellow, purple and orange intensify one another, while open or sketchy passages keep the field lively.^[3][5]

This separates late splendour from the Golden Period. Klimt did not abandon decorative richness when he moved away from metal. He found a different material route to optical abundance.

Preciousness After Gold

Belvedere argues that Klimt retained a Golden Period achievement—the treatment of the picture as a precious material object—even after he stopped relying on metal leaf. In the late work, colour and handling replace some of the earlier artisanal effect.^[3]

This is a formal continuity, not a hidden-material claim. A yellow field can carry the memory of gold's intensity while remaining oil paint. Pattern can evoke textiles, porcelain or prints without those materials being attached to the canvas.

The fan sharpens the point. It is represented as an object inside the portrait, but it is also made of the same paint as skin and background. Klimt creates a world of luxurious things through pictorial means rather than assembling the substances themselves.

Late colour is therefore not a lesser substitute for metal. It behaves differently. Paint can remain open, uneven and visibly worked; adjacent hues can vibrate without depending on reflected light from a leaf surface.

Understanding that difference keeps Lady with a Fan from being folded back into a generic “golden Klimt”. It belongs to an experiment still in progress at the end of his career.

Colour at the End of Klimt's Career

Belvedere places the work within a late style responsive to Van Gogh, Matisse, Gauguin and younger Expressionists. It emphasises strong colour and open brushwork rather than literal quotation from one modern painter.^[3]

Such comparisons locate Lady with a Fan inside a changing European visual field. They do not mean that a phoenix is copied from Matisse or that a particular patch of colour can be assigned to Van Gogh.

The painting was made during the First World War. Belvedere interprets Klimt's intense colour, harmony and eroticism as a counter-image to grim reality.^[3] This is a curatorial account of late purpose, not evidence that every bird or flower encodes a wartime event.

What is visible is a refusal of chromatic austerity. The portrait builds sensory fullness at a moment when Klimt's own life and the world around him were approaching rupture.

Chinese Robe, Chinese Birds

Belvedere identifies the sitter's garment as a Chinese robe and the background motifs as a Chinese phoenix, a crane, a golden pheasant and lotus flowers. It discusses these as good-fortune imagery within East Asian art.^[4]

The distinctions are important. “Asian” gives a broad region; “Chinese” identifies the institutional attribution of particular costume and motifs. Neither should be replaced by the outdated shorthand “Oriental”.

The phoenix spreads a large rhythmic form through the upper field. Long-necked birds answer the exaggerated length of the woman's neck, while lotus flowers organise intervals of colour around her.^[4][5]

These motifs do not form a naturalistic aviary or garden. Scale and placement serve the portrait's surface. Birds and blossoms belong to a designed field in which background behaves like active pattern.

Their traditional associations with good fortune are useful context, but they do not decode the unknown sitter's biography. A phoenix near her cannot prove rebirth, rank or personal destiny.

Japanese Bijin-ga and the Woman with a Fan

Belvedere identifies a specifically Japanese comparison in the relation between woman and fan. Bijin-ga—images of beautiful women, including celebrated courtesans and geishas—formed an important category within ukiyo-e woodblock printing.^[4]

Klimt collected Asian art, and examples of such prints were present in that environment. The category helps explain how pose, accessory, patterned clothing and flattened space could work together.

It does not make the sitter Japanese, a geisha or a copy of one print model. Klimt painted an unknown woman in Vienna while adapting visual strategies encountered through collecting and reproduction.

The Chinese robe and birds must therefore remain distinct from this Japanese image tradition. The painting's East Asian dialogue is plural, not a single national source applied uniformly to every feature.

Several Asian Histories, Not One “Exotic” Style

Belvedere traces Klimt's interest from an early emphasis on Japanese art in the 1890s towards Chinese, Korean and, at times, Persian and Indian styles. It argues that he studied colour schemes and compositional strategies as well as individual decorative elements.^[4]

That wider history explains why one convenient label is inadequate. The robe and identified birds can carry Chinese associations; the woman-and-fan format can recall Japanese bijin-ga; other parts of Klimt's collection opened still broader visual fields.

The word “exotic” tends to describe everything from the European viewer's perspective while suppressing those distinctions. It also makes borrowing seem like vague atmosphere rather than study, selection and transformation.

Precision does not require claiming a direct source for each mark. In fact, the more carefully Chinese and Japanese evidence is separated, the easier it is to preserve uncertainty around Kuniteru's Snow and unidentified collection objects.

Klimt's portrait is not itself a Chinese or Japanese painting. It is a Viennese oil whose design emerged from cross-cultural looking. Naming that location does not diminish the Asian arts on which the encounter depended.

The result is neither pure copying nor influence without objects. Robe, birds, flowers, prints and photographs provide material anchors, while the final arrangement belongs to Klimt's distinct surface and figure.

Did Utagawa Kuniteru Supply the Background?

Belvedere proposes that the background may have been inspired by Snow, a colour woodcut by Utagawa Kuniteru.^[4] “May” carries the evidentiary weight.

A comparison can reveal related organisation, motifs or colour relationships without proving that Klimt placed the print beside the easel and copied it directly. The source is a scholarly proposal, not a documented commission note.

Chinese porcelain, tiles and embroidery were also included in the 2021–22 Belvedere presentation to establish wider artistic contexts.^[4] Exhibition comparison does not turn every displayed object into a one-to-one template.

The safest conclusion is rich rather than vague: the portrait reflects sustained study of East Asian arts, with particular Chinese and Japanese strands, while exact borrowing remains graded according to the evidence.

Klimt's Collection and the Studio Vestibule

Only a small part of Klimt's extensive Asian collection survives. A photograph by Moriz Nähr of the studio vestibule documents additional prints in his environment.^[4]

This evidence moves the discussion beyond a generic claim that Japanese art was fashionable in Europe. Klimt had material and visual access to works he could study repeatedly.

At the same time, a photograph cannot identify every print at full catalogue precision, and the loss of many objects limits reconstruction. Absence from the surviving collection does not show that he never owned a possible source; presence in the studio does not prove use in this painting.

Collecting supplied a field of sustained attention. Lady with a Fan transforms that attention through oil paint, a square Viennese portrait format and an unknown contemporary model.

Cross-Cultural Exchange and Its Uneven History

Belvedere connects Klimt's membership in the Vienna Institute for Cultural Research, founded in 1915, with pacifist and egalitarian ideals of world culture. Its exhibition interprets the portrait as a meeting of European and Asian pictorial traditions.^[4]

That institutional reading provides valuable historical context, especially against claims of Western cultural superiority current at the time. It should remain attributed rather than turned into a complete personal manifesto by Klimt.

The language of harmony also requires care. European access to Asian art depended on markets, collecting systems and unequal powers. Admiration and transformation can be real without making those conditions disappear.

The painting is strongest evidence for what Klimt did visually: he selected, rearranged and repainted forms from multiple traditions around a figure located in his own artistic world. It cannot by itself prove a fully worked theory of cultural equality.

The 1920 Kunstschau

The painting's first documented public exhibition occurred after Klimt's death. At the Vienna Kunstschau in 1920 it appeared in room 9 as number 42 under the title Bildnis.^[1]

This is later than the studio photograph and later than Erwin Böhler's correspondence with Klimt. It marks public exhibition, not the beginning of the object's physical history.

Erwin Böhler lent the painting, and Belvedere notes that it went to his brother Heinrich in Switzerland that year.^[3] The transfer begins a long period of private ownership rather than entry into a permanent Austrian museum collection.

The posthumous debut also shaped naming. Without Klimt available to explain a final title, Portrait, Dancer and eventually Lady with a Fan directed attention to different aspects of the image.

Those labels also show how titles can generate biography after the fact. Once Dancer appears in print, the sitter's raised neck and pose may seem to confirm it; once Lady with a Fan stabilises, the accessory can appear to define her identity. Neither title records her name.

The current name has the practical advantage of describing a visible object without claiming a profession. It remains a catalogue title, not evidence that Klimt considered the fan more important than the woman's face, robe or background.

From the Böhlers to Rudolf Leopold

Sotheby's provenance begins with Galerie Gustav Nebehay in Vienna and records Erwin Böhler as owner by 1920. Heinrich Böhler then acquired it from his brother, and Heinrich's wife Mabel inherited it in 1940.^[1]

The painting remained within the Böhler family across Vienna, St Moritz and Lugano contexts until Mabel transferred it to Rudolf Leopold around 1963. Sotheby's can place it with Leopold until at least 1981.^[1]

“Around” and “at least” should remain. They mark the precision of the record rather than inviting false exact dates.

Leopold's possession does not mean the work belonged to today's Leopold Museum. It was a private collection stage in the object's provenance.

Sabarsky, Cherry and the 1994 Sale

After Rudolf Leopold, the documented chain continues through dealer and curator Serge Sabarsky to American collector Wendell Cherry, who had acquired the painting by 1988.^[1]

Cherry's estate consigned it to Sotheby's New York, where it appeared as lot 44 on 11 May 1994. The family that bought it at that sale retained it until the 2023 London auction.^[1]

Each stage should remain distinct. Sabarsky is not merged with Cherry; a consignment by Cherry's estate is not called a living owner's direct sale; the 1994 purchasing family is not named beyond the auction record.

This documented chain is extensive but not a licence to invent private display locations. Sotheby's records ownership and selected exhibitions, not a continuous map of the painting's rooms.

Exhibitions Across Four Decades

After the 1920 Kunstschau, the painting appeared in a multi-venue Japanese exhibition in 1981, at the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor in 1989 and in Krakow in 1992.^[1]

These displays punctuate a history otherwise dominated by private ownership. They show that private status did not make the work permanently inaccessible, but they do not support continuous public display.

In 2021–22, the painting returned to Vienna on loan for a two-part Belvedere presentation. The first phase placed it among Klimt's last works; the second examined East Asian art.^[3][4]

The loan ran from 25 March 2021 to 13 February 2022, with the East Asian phase beginning on 7 October 2021.^[3][4] Those dates are past exhibition history, not evidence that the picture remains at the Upper Belvedere in August 2026.

The 2023 Sale

Sotheby's offered Lady with a Fan in London on 27 June 2023. The painting sold for £85,305,800, approximately $108.8 million in Sotheby's contemporary reporting.^[2]

At that date the auction house described the result as a new auction record for Klimt and for a work of art sold at auction in Europe.^[2] Record language must remain tied to June 2023; later sales can change rankings.

Price documents market demand, rarity and a specific competitive event. It does not demonstrate that this is Klimt's greatest portrait, settle its completion status or identify the sitter.

The sale record lists property from a private collection but does not name the successful buyer.^[1] The defensible current statement is private ownership after the auction, with present holder and location undisclosed.

How to Look at Lady with a Fan

Begin with the woman's face before following the pattern. Notice how the raised head and long neck establish a living axis that the birds echo but cannot replace.

Then examine the fan. It is not merely a title-giving accessory: its concealment produces the erotic relation between visible shoulder, hidden breast and imagined body.

Separate robe from background without expecting a hard boundary. Both are patterned, but the robe relates to the torso while phoenix, crane, pheasant and lotus activate the surrounding field.

Look for paint rather than gold. The yellow ground may feel luminous, yet the recorded medium is oil on canvas and Belvedere places the work after Klimt's use of metal leaf.^[1][3]

Finally, keep cultural sources precise. Chinese costume and motifs, Japanese bijin-ga, a possible Kuniteru print and wider East Asian collecting illuminate different parts of the work.

A Portrait at the Edge of Completion

Lady with a Fan is compelling partly because it can support two truths. It is coherent enough to operate as a powerful finished image, and its studio history makes complete authorial closure impossible to claim.

The unknown sitter is similarly open but not empty. She cannot be securely named or made into a documented dancer, yet pose, gaze, skin, fan and robe give her an unmistakable pictorial identity.

Klimt's East Asian references are neither background trivia nor a single borrowed style. They shape garment, accessory, flatness, colour and the distribution of birds and flowers while retaining different Chinese and Japanese histories.

The result stands far from the literal metal splendour for which Klimt is most famous. Paint alone makes this final square blaze, turning an anonymous woman and a portable fan into one of his most sensuously concentrated late experiments.

Frequently Asked Questions

References

Accessed August 2026.

1. Sotheby's, “Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan),” 27 June 2023 lot record for exact title, 1917–18 date, oil-on-canvas medium, dimensions, complete listed provenance, 1920 and later exhibition history, historical titles and private-sale context. View source.
2. Sotheby's, “Klimt's Last Great Portrait Sets New Auction Record,” exact £85,305,800 result and auction-record description as reported on 27 June 2023. View source.
3. Belvedere, Vienna, “Lady with Fan: Gustav Klimt's Last Works,” 2021–22 exhibition research on date, non-commission status, almost-finished state, studio photograph, late oil-and-colour practice without metal leaf, provenance outline and loan dates. View source.
4. Belvedere, Vienna, “Lady with Fan: Gustav Klimt and East Asian Art,” unidentified model, nearly completed state, Chinese robe and motifs, Japanese bijin-ga, possible Kuniteru source, collection evidence, wider cultural context and exact second-phase exhibition dates. View source.
5. Gustav Klimt Database, “The Final Years,” unfinished classification, figure/fan/robe structure, late anonymous-portrait context, bird and lotus identifications, Erwin Böhler correspondence and studio evidence. View source.

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