Oprah sells Gustav Klimt painting for $150m

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Oprah Winfrey sold Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II last year for $150 million
She purchased Gustav Klimt's painting for $87.9 million at Christie's in 2006
Oprah anonymously loaned her Adele painting to MoMa for five years in 2014
It was most recently on display for an exhibition at New York's Neue Galerie
Portrait is one of two Klimt painted of the Jewish woman in the early 1900s
First painting became subject of Hollywood film The Woman in Gold

Published: 13:27 EST, 8 February 2017 | Updated: 19:18 EST, 8 February 2017

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Oprah Winfrey has sold a Gustav Klimt painting to a private buyer in China for a staggering $150 million - earning herself a $63 million profit in a decade.

The billionaire bought the Austrian painter's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II for $87.9 million back in 2006 at Christie's in New York.

Oprah was approached last year by art dealer Larry Gagosian who had a Chinese buyer interested in purchasing the 100-year-old painting, Bloomberg reports.

The sale was one of the most expensive private art deals in 2016.

Oprah Winfrey has sold a painting from Austrian artist Gustav Klimt to a private buyer in China for a staggering $150 million - earning herself a $63 million profit in a decade

The painting was originally found as part of a collection of paintings stolen by the Nazis in WWII. It was given back to surviving members of the Bloch-Bauer family in 2006.

The talk-show queen had anonymously loaned the 1912 painting to New York's Museum of Modern Art for five years in 2014 where it was including in the gallery's fifth floor collection.

Before Oprah agreed to the sale, she had also loaned the portrait to the Neue Galerie New York for its 'Klimt and the Women of Vienna’s Golden Age 1900–1918' exhibition, which ended on January 16.

Oprah's painting is one of two formal portraits that Klimt made of Adele Bloch-Bauer - a wealthy Jewish society woman from the twentieth century.

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I and the painting Oprah recently sold both appeared in the exhibition at Neue Galerie.

The billionaire bought Gustav Klimt's 1912 Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II for $87.9 million back in 2006 at Christie's in New York

Oprah's painting is one of two formal portraits that Klimt made of Jewish woman Adele Bloch-Bauer. The first - Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I - became the subject of Hollywood film The Woman in Gold starring Helen Mirren

Billionaire Ronald Lauder, who owns the German and Austrian art museum, purchased the first Adele portrait for $135 million in 2006.

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I became the subject of Hollywood film, The Woman in Gold, starring Helen Mirren as Adele's niece.

She fought for decades to regain the portrait from the Nazis who had renamed it because they didn't want people to know the woman was Jewish.

Another of Klimt's paintings - Water Serpents II - was sold privately by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev to an Asian buyer for $170 million in 2015.

Oprah was approached last year by art dealer Larry Gagosian (above) who had a Chinese buyer interested in purchasing the 100-year-old painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II

Another of Klimt's paintings - Water Serpents II (above) - was sold privately by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev to an Asian buyer for $170 million in 2015