2024-04-24 14:17:00
By Michael Huber
24.04.2024
The painting “Portrait of Fräulein Lieser” by Gustav Klimt from 1917 was expected to fetch the highest price ever paid at an auction in Austria on Wednesday evening at the Kinsky auction house. But just before the auction, events took place: just an hour before the auction started, the Southgerman newspaper a report according to which a previously unknown heir contacted the Austrian Federal Monuments Office and asked them not to grant the export authorization that had been granted.
It was previously assumed that there were two groups of heirs who might be eligible. It was not clear which part of the Lieser family – the brothers Justus and Adolf Lieser who became wealthy as industrialists – commissioned the portrait from Gustav Klimt in 1917.
For the auction house “im Kinsky” and for the Austrian art market, it was to be a journey into areas never before reached: the record for the most expensive work of art ever auctioned in Austria was held by the Dorotheum , where the painting “Man between Virtue and Vice” was sold in 2010 for 7.02 million euros. The domestic record “im Kinsky” was achieved in the same year with Egon Schiele’s painting “Procession”, which brought in 4.4 million euros.
According to the catalog, the painting has hung “since then In the mid-1960s, always in the salon of a villa near Vienna.” The person who gave the painting remained anonymous until the end. However, he turned to the successors of the Lieser family to “fair and just” to give. solution” according to the principles of Washington : This means that the heirs of the original owners share in the proceeds of the auction. The Lieser family belonged to the Jewish bourgeoisie in Vienna and was persecuted by the National Socialist regime. the picture happened after 1938.
The main question here is which part of the Lieser family – the brothers Justus and Adolf Lieser who achieved considerable wealth as producers of hemp ropes – commissioned Gustav Klimt to paint the portrait in 1917. Was it Adolf Lieser who portrayed his daughter Margarethe Constance? Or was it Henriette Lieser-Landau who, as the wife of his brother Justus, was recognized as a patron of art and music and represented by one of her daughters, Annie or Helene? Although the specialist literature has long favored the first thesis, recently – for example through research by… Standard after the official announcement of the auction – indications of the second version.
View all content
The dispute is not relevant to the sale in that the agreement concluded in advance included all branches of the family and ““With the auction of the artwork and the payment of the highest bidder, all claims receivable from all concerned will be settled and fulfilled,” as the lawyer and managing director of “im Kinsky”, Ernst Ploil, explained in advance of the calculation that the negotiations will take into account the pieces of the puzzle that have emerged recently that something would have gone differently.
Of the South German Newspaper When confronted with the new applicant, the auction house said they would deal with him after the auction to find a “fair solution”. The monument office explained that claims must first be clarified within the family.
#heirs #arrived #auction