The Portrait of Mademoiselle Lieser, missing for 100 years, was sold for 30 million euros on Wednesday, the low estimate for this painting with its unclear provenance.
The Portrait of Mademoiselle Lieser by Gustav Klimt, a missing painting which recently resurfaced, was sold for 30 million euros on Wednesday in Vienna, a record in Austria despite the gray areas surrounding its provenance. Valued at between 30 and 50 million euros, it will ultimately have been sold at the bottom of the range of estimates from the house “im Kinsky”, far from the 86 million euros reached in June 2023 in London for another canvas of this artist.
The event remains no less historic, “no comparable work” never having been offered in the artist’s native country, according to Claudia Mörth-Gasser, head of the modern art section at Im Kinsky. “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 stands at “only” 7 million euros for a Flemish painting sold in 2010.
This resurrected and unsigned portrait caused a sensation. Especially since it is very well preserved and has never left Austria. Since it was unveiled in January, people have rushed to admire it at exhibitions preceding the sale in Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain and Hong Kong.
Read alsoThe many mysteries surrounding a portrait of Klimt found in Vienna
And of course at home in a magnificent baroque palace in the heart of the capital, surrounded by sketches by the master and other works by contemporaries like Egon Schiele, also appearing in the sale which is due to start at 5 p.m. (3 p.m. GMT).
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. The painter died the following year and 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 The 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 then reappeared with a Nazi trader before her daughter, then distant relatives inherit it in turn. But for Kinsky, specialized in restitution procedures, it is a “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.
Bound to confidentiality, 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 about the terms of this amicable agreement and experts are criticizing a procedure deemed too rapid, despite the uncertainties over the fate of a work of immense value.
“Its provenance has not been fully clarified until now”the time should have been taken for a more in-depth examination, says the weekly Profile Monika Mayer, head of archives at the Belvédère museum, which houses the famous Kiss de Klimt.
Comments corroborated by Erika Jakubovits, cultural director of the Jewish Community of Vienna, who has been involved for decades in the restitution of works of art stolen by the Nazis. “For me, the “Portrait of Mademoiselle Lieser” still presents too many unresolved questions “, she explained to the Republic who carried out a major investigation into the painting in question.“I believe that this case should be the subject of an independent and thorough investigation and that its history should be reconstructed accurately, as is the case with every painting analyzed in the context of restitutions. And the investigation should be conducted independently of the auction house, the current owner and heirs. It would be better to clarify all these questions before the sale. 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 spoliations.