Adam SchraderApril 30, 2024 Share This Article
A new potential legal heir has surfaced for the controversial, long-lost portrait by Gustav Klimt, coinciding with the artwork’s auction at Vienna’s im Kinsky last week.
The piece, “Portrait of Fräulein Lieser” (1917), fetched $32 million from a Hong Kong buyer represented by Patti Wong & Associates. Although this was the low estimate, it set a record for any Austrian auction house.
The potential heir, an architect from Munich, came forward after lodging a claim with Austria’s Federal Monuments Office, as reported by Der Standard. This heir is not a Lieser family descendant, traditionally thought to have commissioned the portrait, but could be an heir to Lieser’s legal successors. The architect reportedly discovered the portrait and its contentious history through an article in Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Believed to have been initiated in May 1917, the painting was incomplete in Klimt’s studio at his death in 1918 and subsequently passed to the family. It was documented in a 1925 photograph while with the family. The painting’s whereabouts between then and 1960, when the recent seller acquired it, remain obscure, fueling speculation about its acquisition during the Nazi era.
Nonetheless, Der Standard states that the im Kinsky auction adhered to the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, despite no evidence of looting or illegal confiscation by the Nazis, and no claims from the Lieser family. The auction proceeded after the Federal Monuments Office approved its export in October 2023, following a private restitution settlement with the Lieser descendants. The Federal Monuments Office has yet to comment. The settlement involved the seller and the Lieser heirs, not the auction house, and now must be reassessed due to the emergence of the new claimant.
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