The $32 million sale of Gustav Klimt’s long-lost Portrait of Fräulein Lieser will not proceed, according to Austrian press. After making headlines last year, the record-setting painting has been mired in controversy surrounding its troubled provenance, which led to the sale falling through.
The Klimt Portrait’s Rediscovery and Controversy
Last year, Auction House im Kinsky in Vienna announced the rediscovery and sale of Portrait of Fräulein Lieser, a 1917 Gustav Klimt portrait previously known only from a black-and-white photograph. In April 2024, the Klimt portrait was sold to an anonymous buyer from Hong Kong for €30 million, equivalent to about $32 million at the time. While the sale barely surpassed the low estimate for the work, it broke the record for the highest price ever achieved at auction in Austria.
Gustav Klimt, intrepid leader of the Viennese Secession movement, was commissioned to paint Portrait of Fräulein Lieser in 1917. He is believed to have begun work on the vibrant three-quarter portrait in May of that year. It was found technically unfinished in his studio when he died in 1918. The portrait was then handed over to the Lieser family, a wealthy family of industrialists in Vienna.
There have been conflicting theories about the public provenance of the Klimt portrait over the past century. Its exact whereabouts in the decades between a 1925 photograph, which shows the painting in the possession of the Lieser family, and 1961, when it was recorded as belonging to the consignor’s family, are unknown.
Gaps in Painting’s Provenance Led to Failed Sale
Importantly, this gap in the Klimt portrait’s provenance coincides with Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany from 1938 to 1945. This was a time during which hundreds of thousands of Jewish Austrians, including members of the Lieser family, faced violent persecution. Many were forced to sell or abandon their possessions, including valuable artworks. It is most likely that the Lieser family sold the Klimt portrait under duress.
The mysterious identity of the Klimt portrait’s sitter has also complicated matters. When it announced the $32 million sale of the work last year, Auction House im Kinsky suggested the painting depicts either Helene or Annie Lieser, the two daughters of Justus and his ex-wife Henriette Lieser, a known patron of modern art. Art historians, however, have since asserted that Fräulein Lieser is actually Margarethe Lieser, the daughter of Justus’s brother Adolf Lieser.
In an earlier attempt to resolve the provenance issue, the consignors of the Klimt portrait reached a private restitution agreement with the heirs of Adolf and Henriette Lieser, agreeing to share half of the sale proceeds due to the painting’s unlawful acquisition. However, after the $32 million sale was announced last year, another potential heir emerged: the legal successor to Margarethe’s brother Hans. The buyer attempted to negotiate a new series of settlements, which failed when Hans’s heir refused to sign an agreement. According to the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, the sale was officially canceled last month.
