Klimt's Litzlbergkeller Returns to Auction After 29 Years, Estimated at Up to $80M
Gustav Klimt's landscape 'Litzlbergkeller' is heading back to the auction block after 29 years. Christie's will offer the painting in New York on November 17 with an estimate of $60 million to $80 million, up to about 5.4 times the $14.7 million it fetched in 1997.
A Lakeside Inn Painted in Klimt's Late Style
Painted in 1915-1916, the square canvas shows a brewery and inn on Austria's Lake Attersee, surrounded by dense forest. Klimt filled the scene with short, decorative brushstrokes. Above, the building and trees are clearly defined. Below, their reflections dissolve into small patches of color that edge toward abstraction. No people appear, so the architecture, forest and water take center stage.
Klimt first visited Attersee in 1900 and spent several summers there before his death in 1918. Unlike many of his lake views, this one was commissioned by his longtime patron, the banker Otto Primavesi. It later passed through several private owners, including the dealer and collector Serge Sabarsky, a co-founder of New York's Neue Galerie. When it sold at Sotheby's New York in 1997, it set a record for the artist at auction. In recent years it was on long-term loan to the Leopold Museum in Vienna.
Klimt's market has changed dramatically since then. In November 2025, his 'Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer' sold for $236.4 million at Sotheby's New York, a new artist record. Two landscapes also sold last year: 'Blumenwiese' for $86 million and 'Waldabhang bei Unterach am Attersee' for about $68.3 million. His landscape record remains 'Birch Forest', which fetched $104.5 million at Christie's in 2022.
Christie's global president of 20th and 21st century art, Max Carter, praised the painting's rich color, clear upper composition and jewel-like reflections, and called the estimate conservative for a mature Klimt landscape offered in nearly a decade. The painting will be shown in Hong Kong from October 27 to 29, then at Christie's Rockefeller Center in New York from November 7. Kandinsky's 'Betonte Ecken' carries the same $60 million to $80 million estimate in the sale.
Why It Matters
After last year's prices for Klimt's portraits and landscapes, this sale will show how much collectors now pay for his 1910s landscapes. The result will set a fresh benchmark for the market.
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