(Vienna) The Portrait of Miss Lieser by Gustav Klimt, a long-lost painting, was sold for 35 million euros ($51 million) on Wednesday in Vienna, below expectations, amid questions about its fate under Nazism.
Valued at between 30 and 50 million euros, it was finally sold to a private collection in Hong Kong, HomeArt, just at the low estimate, far from the 86 million euros ($126 million) reached in June 2023. in London for another painting by the Austrian master.
The buyer promised to make the work available for three months to the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, which houses the famous Kiss by Klimt.
The head of the “im Kinsky” auction house, Ernst Ploil, said he was “disappointed” with the final price, blaming “the numerous critical press articles which destabilized” buyers.
There was only one left in the running, he regretted, the others having given up in the face of the gray areas surrounding the provenance of the painting, commissioned by a rich Jewish family and produced in 1917 by Klimt shortly before his dead.
The event nonetheless remains historic, “no comparable work” having ever been offered in Klimt’s native country, according to expert Claudia Mörth-Gasser, head of the modern art section.
“No one expected that a painting of this importance, which had disappeared for a hundred years, would resurface,” she says, while the previous Austrian record amounted to “only” 7 million euros ( 10 million dollars) for a Flemish painting sold in 2010.
Helene, Annie or Margarethe?
The canvas, begun in 1917 and remaining unfinished, represents a young brunette woman with precise features, adorned with a large cape richly decorated with flowers on a bright red background.
Unsigned, it remained hidden for decades in private homes in Austria.
A mystery, hotly debated in the specialist press, still surrounds the identity of the model.
Who is this young Viennese from the wealthy upper middle class, who visited the workshop of the adored genius of her time nine times?
Only one thing is certain: she comes from the Lieser family, a great Jewish industrial dynasty, patron of the artistic avant-garde.
But is she one of the two daughters named Helene and Annie of Henriette (Lilly) Lieser, a wealthy divorcee who was a pioneer in the emancipation of women?
Or that of his brother-in-law Adolf, Margarethe, as claimed in a first complete catalog of Klimt’s works, produced in the 1960s?
The only photo of the painting known to date, probably taken in 1925 as part of an exhibition, would suggest that it belonged to Lilly Lieser that year.
Nazi trader
According to the daily Der Standard, which is based on correspondence archived in an Austrian museum, she could have entrusted it to a member of her staff before dying in deportation at the end of 1943.
The painting would then reappear in the possession of a Nazi merchant before his daughter, then distant relatives, inherit it in turn.
But for Kinsky, which specializes in restitution procedures, it is one “hypothesis among others”.
After the war, the painting was never claimed, unlike other goods, by one of the three Lieser descendants who had all survived.
Claudia Mörth-Gasser explains to AFP that her employer was contacted two years ago for legal advice by its owners, who wish to remain anonymous.
Im Kinsky informed the current beneficiaries of the two Lieser branches, who live in particular in the United States. Some traveled to see the painting, before signing a contract with the owners, thus removing an obstacle to the sale of the painting.
Nothing has filtered out on the terms of this amicable agreement and experts have deemed the procedure too rapid, despite the uncertainties.
“Its provenance not having been fully clarified until now”, it would have been necessary to take the time for a more in-depth examination, thus estimated in the weekly Profile Monika Mayer, head of archives at Belvédère.
Moreover, the painting was not presented in the United States, for fear that it would be confiscated by the courts in the event of a dispute, as is the rule for works suspected of being from spoliations.