The most famous painting by Gustav Klimt is arguably The Kiss – but it isn’t the most expensive. That honour goes to Wasserschlangen II (Water Serpents II), which he painted between 1904 and 1907, and is the follow-up to his 1904 painting Wasserschlangen I.
Water Serpents II has had a chequered past. Its Jewish owner Jenny Steiner was forced to flee her home in 1938 and, like the other Klimt artworks on this list, the painting was subsequently confiscated by the Nazis. It was then given to the filmmaker Gustav Ucicky, who was coincidentally rumoured to be one of Klimt’s illegitimate children.
The painting was at the centre of scandal again in 2013 when Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier sold it to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for $183.3 million when he’d bought it for ‘just’ $112 million. Rybolovlev resold Wasserschlangen II for $170 million in 2015, the equivalent of $221 million (£178m) today.