The Austrian Symbolist painter Gustav Klimt is best-known for the immortalising opulence of such milestones of modern art as his gold-leaf-encrusted canvases The Kiss, 1907-8, and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907. But it is a rather less famous work – one that was still sitting on the artist's easel when Klimt died from pneumonia as a result of the flu in February 1918, a month after suffering a devastating stroke that had left him partially paralysed and unable to paint – that is expected to fetch the highest price ever paid for a painting in Europe when it is sold at auction next week. Radically different in texture and tone from his better-known masterpieces of a decade earlier, the exquisitely enchanting Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan), 1917-18, estimated to sell for upwards of £65m ($83m), seems plucked almost from another world, and points to where Klimt's imagination was heading had he not fallen victim to the influenza pandemic that was sweeping the world.

奥地利象征主义画家Gustav Klimt因其长盛不衰的奢华风格现代艺术里程碑式画作而闻名，例如镶金箔画作The Kiss，Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907。但竟是他的一副不怎么出名的作品——1918年2月，Klimt因流感感染肺炎去世时，这幅作品仍放在他的画架上，正是一个月前这位画家严重中风并导致了身体部分瘫痪，使得他无法绘画——这幅作品预计将在下周拍卖时创下欧洲画作竞拍的最高价。这幅与他十年前更广为人知的杰作在质地和色调上有着根本性的不同的Dame mit Fächer（带扇女士）售价估计超过6500万英镑，超出想象的价格，这也不禁使人思考，如果那场席卷全球的流感疫情没有带走Klimt的生命，这位画家将能创造出怎样的新作。

A wonder of interweaving patterns and mingled rhythms, Lady with a Fan captures a young woman lost in thought as she stands before us, staring askance into the faraway distance to our left. Her identity remains unknown. That she hasn't noticed our intrusion into the intimate space that she inhabits, bedroom or boudoir, seems clear enough from the unheeded slip of her ornate robe down her arm and the tentative hold that her fingers have on the folding fan that shields her breasts – a perilous prop that feels a flimsy flick away from falling.

这幅画是图案交织与韵律的奇观，画面中一位年轻女子站在我们眼前，斜视着左前方，陷入了沉思。画中的女士身份未知。很明显她没有注意到我们闯入了她居所中的私密空间，卧室或是女子闺房，因为她那华丽的长袍滑落在手臂上，而她的手轻扶着遮挡了她胸部的扇子——仿佛弹指间就会掉落。

Eschewing the traditional vertical format for portraits in Lady with a Fan, Klimt used a square, giving the painting a modern edge.

这幅画并没有使用传统肖像画所使用的垂直画布，而用了正方形，这给予了这幅画一丝现代风格。

What holds us entranced by the woman's entrancement is the carefully choreographed clash of pattern, pigment and texture that fix her in this alluringly stylised elsewhere. The work is a vibrant inventory of Klimt's own cultural obsessions, from flowing Chinese robes to the floating lyricism of Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts, both of which the artist collected and turned to for inspiration. Klimt's home, according to the Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele, whom Klimt mentored, was furnished with "a large number of Japanese prints covering the walls" and "a huge wardrobe, which held his marvellous collection of Chinese and Japanese robes". The rich silk of the young woman's green and gold striped robe, her porcelain complexion blushed with rouge, her chestnut curls, and the imagined flutter of the fan's vermillion leaves, all form a riot that is invigorated further by the chaos behind her.

除了女性本身的魅力，更吸引我们的是画面上精心编排的图案、色彩和纹理的视觉冲击。这幅作品生动地展示了Klimt自己对于不同文化的痴迷，从飘逸的中国风格长袍到日本浮世绘木刻风格的漂浮图案，这两者都是画家的灵感源泉，画家也将这两个元素变成了画面的一部分。据曾受过Klimt指导的奥地利表现艺术家Egon Schiele说，Klimt家中的“墙上挂着大量的日本版画”和“一个巨大的衣柜，里面放有他收藏的中国和日本长袍”。画中年轻女子的丝绸绿底金条纹长袍、被胭脂染红的瓷白肌肤、栗色的卷发以及我们能脑补到中朱红色扇面的轻颤，所有的这些元素都躁动着，而背景中的纷乱元素更激化了这些元素的躁动。

Influenced by the Art Nouveau style and painted with added gold leaf, The Kiss (1907-8) is one of Klimt's most popular works 

Lady with a Fan is among the very few portraits by Klimt, a leading figure of the Vienna Secession art movement, to be owned privately. It was last sold in 1994, when it fetched $11.6m (£9m). Thirty years later, it is expected to command nearly seven times that, likely becoming one of the most expensive portraits ever to come to auction. If Sotheby's achieves the price it is asking, £65.5m ($83.4m), Klimt's final painting will soar past René Magritte's L'empire des Lumières, which sold for £59.4m ($75.6m) in 2022; Alberto Giacometti's Walking Man I, which set the record for any work of art sold at auction in Europe when it went in 2010 for £65m ($83m).

Lady With a Fan是维也纳分裂派艺术运动的领军人物Klimt为数不多的私人肖像画之一。它的最后一次交易记录是在1994年，当时的售价为1160万美元（900万英镑）。30年后，它的预计竞拍价格飙升到了这一数字的近7倍，很有可能会成为拍卖史上最昂贵的肖像画之一。如果Sotheby拍卖行达成了它所要求的6550万英镑的价格，那么Klimt的最后一作将会超过René Magritte的L'empire des Lumières的价格，后者在2022年以5940万英镑的价格成交。Alberto Giacometti的Walking Man I目前是欧洲艺术品竞拍会拍出的最高价拍品，成交价为6500万，于2010年售出。

Set side-by-side with Klimt's better-known works, such as The Kiss and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, Lady with a Fan reveals how far the artist had travelled creatively in the decade before his death. Gone is the audacious glitter of gold leaf that exalted his sensual subjects into secular icons. Far looser and more expressive in its brushstrokes. Intensifying that sense of unfixable fluidity are moments in the painting where the bare weave of linen canvas is still visible – unpainted patches that have led some to suspect that work was still unfinished. But this is a painting whose very power issues from flux and fragmentation. Its unfinishedness is what completes it.

这幅Lady with a Fan与Klimt其他更广为人知的作品，例如The Kiss和Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I一起向人们展示了这位画家的惊人创造力。这幅画放弃了将感性元素世俗化的闪亮金箔。画面上的笔触要松散得多，也更具表现力。画作上仍可见亚麻帆布的纹理——仍有些部分没被颜料所覆盖，而这加强了画面的流动感。而这幅画的魅力正来源于破碎感和流动感。未完成反而圆满了这幅画。