The sum of 30 million euros was given by the man who bought a painting by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt that was considered lost for the last 100 years and was sold to auction in Vienna.
The unfinished work entitled Portrait of Fraulein Lischer was commissioned by a family of Jewish industrialists in 1917, a year before Klimt’s death.
However, there are many unanswered questions about the painting and debate about who the woman in the portrait is, as well as what happened to the painting during the Nazi era.
It is believed to depict one of the daughters of either Adolf or Justus Lisser who were siblings from a wealthy family of Jewish industrialists.
Art historians Tobias Nutter and Alfred Weidinger say the painting depicts Adolf Lisser’s daughter.
But the im Kinsky auction house in Vienna, which auctioned the artwork, suggests that the painting could also depict one of the two daughters of Justus Lisser and his wife Henrietta.
Henrietta, who was known as Lily, was a patron of modern art. He was deported by the Nazis and died in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Her daughters both survived World War II.
The auction house said in a statement that the exact fate of the painting after 1925 was “unclear”.
“What is known is that it came to the present owner through three successive inheritances.”
The identity of the current Austrian owners was not made public.
The painting was sold on behalf of these owners and the legal heirs of the Lisser family under the Washington Principles – an international agreement to return works of art looted by the Nazis to the descendants of the people from whom the works were taken.
Ernst Ploil from im Kinsky told the BBC: “We have an agreement, according to the Washington authorities, with the whole family.”
Auction house im Kinsky described the deal as “a fair and just solution”.
Klimt’s art has fetched huge sums at auction in the past.
His ‘Lady with a Fan’ was sold for €99.2 million by Sotheby’s in June 2023, making it the most valuable work of art ever sold at auction in Europe.
