Serena Pulitzer Lederer (1867-1943)

Serena Lederer was one of the brightest figures in Vienna society around 1900, and she and her husband August, a drinks industrialist, became Klimt's most important patrons. He painted her in 1899 almost entirely in white, a tall pale figure dissolving into a pale ground, and he chose the high-waisted gown himself from her wardrobe. Over the next years the Lederers built the largest private collection of Klimt anywhere. That is also why this portrait has the history it does. In 1942 the Nazis seized the family's art in Vienna, and much of the collection later burned in a castle fire in 1945. This canvas survived, was returned to Serena's son in 1948, and eventually reached New York.