NEW YORK, June 19 (UPI) -- A portrait by Gustav Klimt reportedly has been bought for $135 million, making it the most expensive painting to have ever been purchased.
The gold-flecked 1907 oil portrait "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" by Klimt was purchased for the Neue Galerie in Manhattan by Ronald S. Lauder for the highest sum ever paid for a painting, The New York Times reported Monday.
Confidentiality agreements forbid Lauder to disclose the actual price, but people close to the sale said he paid $135 million for the artwork.
In a telephone interview Mr. Lauder did not deny that he had paid a record amount for the painting, the previous record being $104.1 million, for Picasso's 1905 "Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice)" in an auction at Sotheby's in 2004.
