Klimt Painting Resurfaces Nearly a Century After Being Lost
By Calla Mitchell
Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Lady Lieser, 1917.
Nazi looting? Ambiguous inheritances? Hooked yet?...good. Up until now, the mysterious disappearance of Gustav Klimt’s ‘Portrait of Lady Lieser’ has only ever been accessible to art historians, and us art lovers, through a singular black and white photograph. Yet just a few days before the penning of this article the work has resurfaced, like a phoenix from the ashes, into the art scene in a full cacophony of fiery colour.
Klimt’s work photographed during a press conference of the im Kinsky auction house, Vienna, 25th January 2024.
Thought to be lost forever, Gustav Klimt’s Lieser dispels her label of “lost” (or for a more 1925 onwards accuracy, “destroyed” or “burnt” in WW2) and the rediscovery of this painting has caused a sensation. As decreed by Ernst Ploil co-manager Director of im Kinsky Auction House, this is due to its “rarity, artistic significance and value” which “has not been available on the art market in Central Europe for decades”. The painting will be auctioned at Vienna’s second largest auction house im Kinsky on April 24th with estimated prices at between £30m and £50m. The nature of the auction incites the inevitable question: Is this another example of the painting’s monetary value operating under the guise of celebrity status? Or is it purely carried by the premise of its shocking discovery and the talent of Klimt’s craftsmanship?
Multiple rumours cascade the painting as ‘Portrait of Lady Lieser’ trickled through three family inheritances and an assumed looting by the Nazis. Unusually, all its trickling left the painting “no stamps or stickers on the back” to signify movement, as reported by Claudia Mörth-Gasser in an im Kinsky press conference. Hidden in private ownership, the painting’s provenance before 1960 reveals only a drought of knowledge and a pool of ambiguity and moot.
The commissioner is documented by a single “Lieser” (wealthy Austrian Jewish family) and from this little knowledge the first trickle of the paintings journey can be supposed with the Lieser family. The singular “Lieser” also propels the young lady’s identity into dispute. However, it is long believed Adolf Lieser commissioned his daughter to be painted. Ploil provides a certainty: “what is sure is that the painting was still in Klimt’s studio at the time of his death”. The painting, left unfinished, can thus be agreed it was a final work of Klimt’s before his stroke in 1918.
After a few family successions, the art historian Otto Kallir Nirenstein planned to exhibit the work in a 1925 Klimt show, but from then all traces of the painting’s movements are drought-full …until now of course. The auction house offer another possible trickle, they “assumed a worse cause scenario” of unlawfully expropriated looting during the Nazi era, thus the painting may also fall under the Washington Principles established in 1998 to return Nazi-looted art to the stolen from descendants.
Lieser, for over 100 years, has remained “incredibly well preserved, in almost unblemished original condition” in her strictly frontal pose, hidden from the world’s artful gaze. She is pressed forward by Klimt’s vivacious red and upon entering the viewer’s space her watchful and arresting gaze is intensified. The thickly brushed marks and block colour adopted to form the floral detailing of Lieser’s heavily adorned blue robe are confident and unapologetically loud and childlike in their rendering. Klimt’s distinctive Art Nouveau style, which came to define the fin-de-siècle Austrian avant-garde, rejects artistic tradition and he creates for Lieser a restless setting of colourful movement demanding invitation through his undefined brushwork and arbitrary colour. im Kinsky describes the painting as “one of the most beautiful portraits of Klimt’s final period of creativity”, and whilst I agree, this propels the excitement of its discovery further.
Bibliography
E G Perry, Kevin. “Gustav Klimt portrait worth £42m found after disappearing nearly a century ago”. Independent. January, 26, 2024. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/gustav-klimt-portrait-found-fraeulein-lieser-b2485627.html.
Lawson-Tancred, Jo. “Gustav Klimt’s Final Portrait, Thought Lost for nearly 100 years, Heads to Auction in Vienna”. artnet. January, 26, 2024. https://news.artnet.com/market/gustav-klimt-lost-portrait-auction-vienna-2423625.
O’Kane, Caitlin. “A Klimt painting that was lost for nearly 100 years after being confiscated by Nazis will be auctioned”. CBS NEWS. January, 26, 2024. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gustav-klimt-painting-lost-100-years-auction-found-private-collector-austria-nazi-confiscated-art/.