Oliver Backer led the white-glove $527.5 million Lauder collection sale at Sotheby’s in New York. Photography courtesy of Alive

Following Christie’s successful start to the week, Sotheby’s debut at the Breuer building on November 18 marked another auction for the books, showing that buyers are willing to spend significant amounts on art and remain active internationally when it comes to masterpieces. Dominating headlines last night was Gustav Klimt’s towering masterpiece Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer) from 1914-16, which topped the white-glove auction of Leonard A. Lauder’s once-in-a-generation collection of 20th-century masterpieces with its $236.4 million result. The sale closed with a record-setting $527.5 million total, surpassing its presale estimate of $379.2-412.5 million.

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Klimt’s portrait also exceeded expectations, hammering on the phone for $205 million before fees—well above its $150 million estimate—to become both the most valuable work by the artist and the most valuable work ever sold in Sotheby’s Modern category. The previous record was held by Picasso’s 1955 Les Femmes d’Alger (Version O), sold at Christie’s New York in 2015 for $179.4 million.

Following the 24-lot Lauder sale, the 21st-century The Now and Contemporary sale was led by Maurizio Cattelan’s viral 18-karat golden toilet, which achieved $12.1 million, marking the artist’s second-highest result at auction and extending his momentum this season after last year’s $6.2 million duct-taped banana.

By midnight, as the evening closed, Sotheby’s reported a final total of $706 million once the additional $178.5 million from The Now and Contemporary was added (over an estimate of $143.6-198.25 million). The combined total was nearly double the auction house’s presale expectations of $379.2-412.5 million, resulting in the highest total ever generated in a single evening by Sotheby’s.

“We witnessed art market history tonight at Sotheby’s,” Sotheby’s CEO Charles F. Stewart said in his statement to the press, noting that this extraordinary result was a fitting inauguration for the auction house’s new building, one to which Leonard A. Lauder’s vision and generosity were so closely tied. In a CNBC interview in recent weeks, Stewart had also noted that “the supply [is] catching up with the demand” in the current season.

There was strong demand for the high-value trophies Sotheby’s secured for the first section of its multimillion-dollar marquee week, driven in particular by bidders in Asia. Within the Leonard A. Lauder auction, two additional Klimt masterpieces—landscapes depicting the artist’s beloved summer retreat, Attersee—also soared above estimates. Blumenwiese (Blooming Meadow) (c. 1908) sold for $86 million against its $80 million estimate, while Waldabhang bei Unterach am Attersee (Forest Slope in Unterach on the Attersee) (1916) achieved $68.3 million. The latter went to Patti Wong, a power advisor at Patti Wong & Associates and, most recently, a founding member of New Perspectives Art Partners. Two pencil-on-paper studies by Klimt also surpassed expectations, bringing the artist’s total for the night to........

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