A missing person was recently found panel by the painter Gustav Klimt and is expected to sell for auction on April 24, while its price may reach millions of dollars.
The “Portrait of Miss Leeser» of 1917, one of the painter's last works, was commissioned by a wealthy Jewish family. The first known owner of the painting died in 1943, imprisoned in a concentration camp. Today the well-preserved painting was presented to the public in Vienna.
The play it was first exhibited in 1925 in the Austrian capital, as evidenced by a black and white photograph, the only proof of its existence. The catalog of the works in that exhibition stated the date and that it was “the property of Mrs. Leeser” whose address was given at 20 Argentinerstrasse.
In the following years, traces of the painting were lost. It resurfaced when its current owners sought legal advice when it came to inheriting it from distant relatives who had owned it since the 1960s.
What happened in between, remains a mystery, expert Ernst Ploy, of the Kinsky auction house, told reporters.
A Gustav Klimt painting thought to have been lost for almost a century will be put on the auction block in Vienna https://t.co/8aBCUmxHjA
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Henriette Leeser, midwife of the Viennese avant-garde scene, remained in Vienna despite the Nazi dictatorship. He was displaced in 1942 and killed a year later. Her heirs were informed and some went to Vienna to see the painting, which they have not claimed to this day. “We have no indication that it was confiscated by the Nazis,” Ploy said.
To avoid any future litigation over the painting's provenance, descendants of the Lizer family and the current owners signed a contract, based on the 1998 Washington Accords, in which 44 countries (including Austria) committed to finding and return artworks stolen by the Nazis to their rightful owners.
The unfinished “Portrait of Miss Leeser” depicts a young, brown-haired woman, wearing a colorful scarf, against a red background. It could fetch 40-50 million euros, perhaps even 70, according to the Kinsky house, taking into account the sums recently given for works by Klimt, who died in Vienna in 1918. Last year in June, the 'Mrs. with fans” was sold by Sotheby's in London for 86 million euros.
Before the auction, “Portrait of Miss Leeser” will be exhibited in Switzerland, Germany, Britain and Hong Kong.
Source: News Beast

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