A painting that was almost destroyed by the artist has been sold for a record $180,000 at an auction in Austria, well beyond an initial estimate of $42,000.
The work by Ukrainian-French painter Marie Bashkirtseff (1860-1884), which she once slashed with a knife, was sold at the Dorotheum auction house in Vienna. It was repaired after the artist’s death.
Frustrated because she believed she had failed to create a decent portrait of her cousin, Bashkirtseff, who was part of Paris’ art and intellectual scene, damaged the piece.
The painting was restored and displayed in the exhibition “Kunst der Frau” at the Vienna Secession in 1910. After recently having fetched the record price, it is Bashkirtseff’s most expensive work.
Also at the Vienna auction, a four-part mountain panorama of the Koralpe range in southern Austria, painted by Markus Pernhart, fetched $344,000. Pernhart was considered the pioneer of Carinthian landscape painting. His nearly 26-foot-long landscape was bought by an Austrian private collector.
In addition, a museum-quality early major work by Hans Makart, known as the “prince among painters,” sold for $395,000, the second-highest price ever paid for one of his paintings. “The Beggar (The Good-Natured Child),” a painting by Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller, sold for $359,000.
Other artists whose works were sold at the auction include Jozef von Brandt (“Returning Home,” $329, 400) and Paja Jovanovic (“Palace Guard,” $167,000).
(Edited by Fern Siegel and Judith Isacoff)
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