LONG-LOST GUSTAV KLIMT PAINTING COMMANDS $37 MILLION AT AUCTION
An unfinished, unsigned 1917 portrait of a young girl by Gustav Klimt that had been missing for almost a hundred years hammered for $37 million at auction in Vienna today. Titled Portrait of Fräulein Lieser, the canvas was sold by local auction house im Kinsky, acting on behalf of an unidentified seller. It was purchased by Hong Kong–based dealer Patti Wong on behalf of an Asian client, according to the New York Times. Wong, a former chair of Sotheby’s Asia who now runs her own art advisory business, last summer facilitated the record-breaking $94.3 million sale of another late Klimt portrait, the 1917–18 Dame mit Fäscher (Lady with a Fan).
Portrait of Fräulein Lieser had been expected to bring in anywhere between $32 million and $53 million. Hampering its ascent to the upper end of that range were its apparent unfinished condition; its lack of a signature, the presence of which would have confirmed that Klimt thought the painting complete; and a murky provenance. Believed to have been commissioned either by Jewish industrialist Adolf Lieser and depicting his teenage daughter, or by Lieser’s sister-in-law Henriette “Lilly” Lieser and portraying one of her two teenage daughters, the canvas is thought to have still been in Klimt’s studio when the renowned Austrian artist died during the influenza pandemic of 1918. The work would subsequently have ended up in the possession of whichever family commissioned it.
The painting’s whereabouts between 1925 and 1961 are unclear, but it is thought to have fallen—by necessity, happenstance, or possibly force—out of the hands of its rightful owner during the 1938 Anschluss, when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany. Since 1961, the painting has had three owners, which im Kinsky did not name. However, the auction house confirmed that, regarding the sale and its proceeds, it had reached a “fair and just solution” that satisfied not only the painting’s current owner but the heirs of both branches of the Lieser family.
