The 1907 portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Gustav Klimt. The portrait has been purchased for $135 million, the highest amount ever paid for a painting, The New York Times reported. [Reuters]

A 1907 portrait by Gustav Klimt has been purchased by cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder for $135 million, the highest amount ever paid for a painting, The New York Times reported.

The price tops the $104.1 million paid for Picasso's 1905 "Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice)" in an auction at Sotheby's in 2004, the paper said in its Monday edition.

The portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of a Jewish sugar industrialist, is considered one of Klimt's masterpieces.

It was the focus of a restitution battle between the Austrian government and a niece of Bloch-Bauer who argued that it was seized along with four other Klimt paintings by the Nazis during World War Two, the Times said.

In January all five paintings were awarded to the niece, Maria Altmann, 90, who lives in Los Angeles, and other family members, it said.

The sale is subject to confidentiality agreements and Lauder would not confirm the price in a telephone interview, The Times said. But experts familiar with the negotiations, who spoke to the paper on condition of anonymity, said he paid $135 million for the work.

"It is a once-in-a-lifetime acquisition," said Lauder, who is a founder of the 5-year-old Neue Galerie, a tiny Manhattan museum devoted entirely to German and Austrian art where all five Klimt paintings will be on view from July 13 through September 18. They are currently at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.