Klimt portrait surrounded by thriller sells for €30m in Vienna

A late portrait by Gustav Klimt with a tangled historical past and surrounded by mysteries bought for a hammer value of €30m (€35m with charges) at Im Kinsky in Vienna, an public sale file for Austria.

The latest discovery of Portrait of Fräulein Lieser (1917) was described by the Vienna public sale home as “a sensation”. It was beforehand solely recognized from a black-and-white {photograph} and had been believed misplaced till Im Kinsky acquired a cellphone name from the consignor round 16 months in the past.

The sale value, bid by a purchaser from Hong Kong, was on the low finish of the estimate vary of €30m to €50m. Even so, it was greater than 4 occasions the earlier Austrian file achieved in 2010, when the Dorotheum public sale home bought a portray by Frans Francken II for simply over €7m. The all-time file for a Klimt at public sale, in the meantime, was set final June at Sotheby’s in London when his portrait Dame mit Fächer (Girl with a Fan, 1917) bought for £85.3m (together with charges).

“In fact we’re delighted on the end result however probably not stunned,” Claudia Mörth-Gasser, Im Kinsky’s Klimt professional, mentioned in a press release.

A lot concerning the Klimt portrait stays unclear: who the sitter was, who commissioned it and what occurred to it through the Second World Battle. Given the doubts concerning the identification of the pre-war proprietor, the public sale home negotiated a settlement between the consignor and the heirs of two branches of the Lieser household, who have been necessary Jewish industrialists within the Austro-Hungarian empire.

The heirs will obtain a share of the proceeds from the public sale, Ernst Ploil, a director of Im Kinsky mentioned at a press convention saying the sale in January. The settlement relies on the belief that the portrait was unlawfully expropriated through the Nazi period, though this isn’t confirmed.

“What’s for positive is that the portray was nonetheless in Klimt’s studio on the time of his dying” in 1918, Ploil mentioned. Klimt by no means fairly completed it and it remained unsigned. From the studio, it’s presumed to have been delivered by the executors of Klimt’s will to whoever commissioned it. Unusually “there are not any stamps or stickers on the again of the portray”. Ploil mentioned.

The identities of each the topic and the consumer are up for debate. Klimt’s personal notes determine the commissioning celebration solely as “Lieser”. It was lengthy believed—and recorded within the Klimt catalogue raisonné—that the portray was commissioned by Adolf Lieser and portrayed his daughter, Margarethe Constance Lieser.

Nevertheless, Im Kinsky now believes the portrait could have been commissioned by Henriette Lieser-Landau, the ex-wife of Justus Lieser, Adolf’s brother, Ploil mentioned. Henriette, an arts patron and pal of Alma Mahler, had two daughters—Annie and Helene—who may have been the topic of the portray. A report within the Austrian newspaper Der Commonplace mentioned Annie’s US immigration paperwork recorded her eyes as gray, whereas the woman within the portray has brown eyes. However Helene, who turned a profitable economist, did have brown eyes, Der Commonplace reported.

Henriette Lieser-Landau was deported in 1942 and murdered in 1943. A black-and-white destructive of the portray within the Austrian Nationwide Library was archived with a observe saying “1925 within the possession of Frau Lieser IV., Argentinierstrasse 20”. Der Commonplace mentioned that was Henriette’s handle.

However Tobias Natter, one of many authors of {the catalogue} raisonné, stays unconvinced. He nonetheless sees an “overwhelming chance” that the sitter was Margarethe Constance Lieser, he says.

He notes that the stock of her possessions that Henriette was compelled to compile by the Nazis made no point out of the portrait, whereas different objects—artwork but additionally porcelain and home goods—have been listed intimately.

Including to the arguments for Margarethe Constance is the truth that her son, William Heinrich de Gelsey, was making an attempt to hint a Klimt portrait of his mom earlier than he died in 2021, in response to Austria’s Kronen Zeitung. In a commentary on 21 April, the paper instructed it might have been higher to postpone the settlement and public sale till the thriller was solved.

The identification of the consumer is “not simply a tutorial query, it’s a very related query referring to the provenance”, Natter mentioned.