- Author, Bethany Bell
- Job title, BBC News correspondent in Vienna
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35 minutes ago
A painting by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, which was considered lost for almost 100 years, was sold at auction in Vienna on April 24 for 30 million euros. Part of the 30 million proceeds will go to the heirs of the family of Jewish industrialists who commissioned the portrait.
The Viennese auction house im Kinski announced in January of this year that the unfinished “Portrait of Fraulein Lieser” (Bildnis Fräulein Lieser) had been found and will be put up for auction.
The portrait was commissioned by a family of Jewish industrialists in 1917, a year before Klimt’s death. The last time the public saw the painting was at an exhibition in 1925.
Experts are still arguing about who exactly is depicted in the painting and what happened to it under the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Art historians Tobias Nutter and Alfred Weidinger believe that this is a portrait of Margaretha Constance Lieser, daughter of the industrialist Adolf Lieser. The auction house im Kinsky, however, suggests that the painting may also depict one of the daughters of Adolf’s brother, Justus Lizer.
Justus’s wife, Henrietta, was a patron of modern art. She died in the Nazi death camp Auschwitz.
Both of Justus and Henrietta’s daughters, Helena and Annie, survived World War II.
The auction house im Kinsky recalls that traces of the painting were lost even before the war and the looting of Jewish property by the Nazis in 1925. The chain of heir-owners of the portrait is then traced back only to the 1960s.
Who was the last owner and sold the painting is not disclosed.
As a representative of im Kinsky explained to the BBC, the heirs of Adolf and Henrietta Lieser received their share of the proceeds for the portrait in accordance with the Washington Principles – an international agreement on the return of valuables taken by the Nazis to the descendants of the rightful owners.
The auction house im Kinsky assures that the agreement with the heirs of the Lieser family was fair and just, but Erika Jakubowitz, executive director of the board of the Jewish Community of Austria, believes that many questions remain unanswered in this story and an independent investigation should be carried out.
“Restitution of works of art is a very delicate issue, all research must be accurate and detailed, and the result must be complete and transparent,” says Jakubowitz. “We need to create an advanced, most modern procedure for the restitution of private property.”
Gustav Klimt’s paintings have already fetched tens of millions at auction. Thus, his “Lady with a Fan” in June 2023 became the most expensive work of art ever sold in Europe: it was auctioned at Sotheby’s for 85.3 million pounds (99.3 million euros or $106.3 million today course).
