Last night's sale at Christie's, New York, proved to be the most lucrative art auction of all time. As it was, an embattled Austrian emigre reaped the greatest rewards.
The sale of Impressionist and 20th Century Art garnered a staggering $491million (£255m), a third of which came from four Klimt paintings that had been returned to their pre-war owner earlier this year.
Paintings by Picasso, Schiele and Gauguin also came under the hammer, but it was the Klimts that stole the show.
For Maria Altmann, the seller of the Klimt oils, the auction has brought to a close a saga that has lasted over half a century. Mrs. Altmann, 90, has lived away from her native Austria since the war. Her aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, was a patroness of the arts and the model for two of Klimt's most celebrated portraits. However, the family's Jewish origins were to prove critical, and the Bloch-Bauers were compelled to flee Austria in World War II. Mrs Altmann raised her four children in America.
For over fifty years, five Klimts - all formerly the property of the Bloch-Bauer family - were held in Vienna's Belvedere Gallery. However, in 2000, Mrs Altmann filed a case for their restitution. It was a complicated affair, as technically the paintings had been listed in Mr. Bloch-Bauer's will before the Nazis looted them. However, Mrs Altmann won the case in January this year. She sold the first picture - 'Portrait Of Adele Bloch-Bauer I - in June for the sum of $135m (£73m). The remaining four were sold at last night's auction.
Austrian art-lovers were distraught at the loss of the paintings, which finally left Austria at the beginning of this year. Journalists criticized the government for not having reached a settlement with Mrs Altmann before the case went to court.
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