A Painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, thought lost for 100 years, has sold for €30 million at an auction in Vienna.
Specifically, according to Guardiantitled Portrait of Fräulein Lieser, the unfinished painting was painted in the spring of 1917, when Klimt was one of the most famous portrait painters in Europe, and a year before his death.
Until Viennese auction house im Kinsky announced at a press conference last January that the portrait had been rediscovered in a private collection, only a black-and-white photograph of the painting was known. The sudden reappearance of the artwork, combined with an interesting story, created considerable interest around the painting.
Before the sale, on Wednesday evening (24/04), around 15,000 visitors had taken the opportunity to see the work on display at im Kinsky.
The amount the painting fetched was at the lower end of the 30 to 50 million euro estimate. However, that is a far cry from the €86 million fetched by another late-period Gustav Klimt portrait, The Lady with a Fan, in London last June – a record for any artwork at auction in Europe.
What questions arise about Gustav Klimt’s painting?
Some key questions about the painting remain unanswered, such as the identity of the subject and its provenance during the Nazi period. This is a commissioned portrait and is believed to depict one of the daughters of Adolf or Justus Lieser, who were siblings from a wealthy family of Jewish industrialists. Some art historians have identified the depicted with Margarethe Constance Lieser, daughter of Adolf Lieser.
However, im Kinsky believes that the painting could also depict one of the two daughters of Justus Lieser and his wife, Henriette, a patron of modern art. An AI-based “aging” of the portrait shows clear similarities to Helene Lieser, an economist who died in 1962, the auction house claimed.
After Gustav Klimt’s death in 1918, the painting ended up in the Lieser family, although it was difficult to ascertain who could rightfully claim ownership of the painting. Art historians have struggled to piece together the painting’s journey between 1925 and 1961. The auction house said the painting’s journey during the Nazi period was “unclear”.
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