A high-profile auction record has unravelled in Vienna, as the $32 million sale of Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Fräulein Lieser (1917) collapses under the weight of unresolved restitution claims. The painting, rediscovered after decades in obscurity, had been heralded as a significant find—until questions over its wartime history proved too contentious to resolve.
When Vienna’s Im Kinsky auction house unveiled the portrait earlier this year, it was a sensation. Long known only through a 1925 black-and-white photograph, the unfinished work, recovered from Klimt’s studio after his death, fetched €30 million ($32 million) in April, setting a new Austrian auction record. The buyer, a Hong Kong-based collector, agreed to the purchase on the condition that all restitution claims be settled.
But just weeks later, the deal fell apart. A previously overlooked heir emerged and refused to sign off on the sale. With no resolution possible, the buyer walked away, leaving the auction house facing losses estimated at €1.5 million ($1.7 million).
The painting’s murky provenance traces back to the Lieser family, wealthy Jewish industrialists in pre-war Vienna. Klimt painted the portrait—likely of one of two teenage Lieser daughters—shortly before he died in 1918. By 1925, it hung in the home of Henriette Lieser, ex-wife of industrialist Justus Lieser.
Henriette was deported to Auschwitz in 1942 and murdered. The painting vanished during the Nazi era, only to resurface in 1961 in the possession of the consignor’s family. How it changed hands remains unclear—a critical gap that has fuelled legal battles.
Auction house experts argued the work was not looted but sold under duress, possibly by Henriette after the Nazis froze her assets. Archival research suggested it passed to Adolf Hagenauer, a Nazi party member whose family later inherited it. But competing theories complicate the narrative. Some scholars believe the sitter was Margarethe Lieser, the daughter of Adolf Lieser, Henriette’s brother-in-law. If true, her descendants could have a stronger claim.
Before the sale, the consignors struck a restitution agreement with the heirs of both Adolf and Henriette Lieser, offering them half the proceeds. But after the auction, a new claimant—Hans Lieser’s heir—stepped forward, demanding recognition. Negotiations stalled, and without his consent, the sale could not proceed.
This case echoes other high-profile restitution disputes, where Nazi-era shadows complicate ownership. Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, famously restituted in 2006 after a lengthy legal battle, set a precedent for such claims.
For now, the Portrait of Fräulein Lieser remains in limbo—its fate uncertain, its past still unresolved. As Austria grapples with the legacy of art plundered during its darkest years, this Klimt stands as a stark reminder: even a record-breaking sale cannot erase history’s unanswered questions.