The final descendant of a Jewish household is accusing an public sale home of attempting to dump a $100 million portray of her nice aunt by a significant artist after altering its title to cover the very fact it had been stolen by Nazis through the Holocaust, new courtroom papers says.
Patricia Leahy — an American member of Austria’s rich Lieser household — claims that the Vienna public sale home im Kinsky pulled the sneaky transfer so they may make a fortune by peddling Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of Fräulein Margarethe Lieser” as a substitute of returning it to its rightful homeowners.
The work was taken from the Jewish household in 1938 by Nazis and by no means seen once more — till it out of the blue reappeared on the Vienna public sale home in 2024 underneath an altered title and a false provenance, Leahy claims.
The public sale spot put the portray on the bloc in 2024 after taking the phrase “Margarethe” out of the title in what Leahy claims was an try to cover its actual identification.
Though the go well with says consultants put the works’ worth at $100 million — because it was one in every of Klimt’s ultimate work — the underhanded public sale try solely fetched a $30 million bid, which was later withdrawn.
The portray “has now change into the image of a poignant narrative,” says go well with, which was filed Thursday in Manhattan Supreme Court docket .
“The portrait of a younger Jewish girl frozen in 1918, which survived the ravages of historical past— together with the Anschluss and looting of Jewish property—now compels the authorized system to reckon with questions of reminiscence, possession, and restitution,” the go well with says.
The portray was commissioned by Adolpf and Silvia Lieser, who wished Klimt — a legend of Austrian Artwork Nouveau — to color a picture in his well-known type of their daughter, Margarethe, who’s Leahy’s nice aunt.
Klimt, nonetheless, died in 1918 earlier than delivering the portrait, which was later discovered, unsigned in a nearly-finished state inside his studio and delivered to the Lieser household, the go well with says.
It was proven publicly solely as soon as, at Vienna’s Neue Galerie in 1925, and remained within the Lieser household’s possession till it was taken by Nazis within the late Nineteen Thirties, the go well with says.
Margarethe and her kids would go on to outlive the Holocaust and to migrate to the UK, however had no information of the work’s whereabouts, courtroom papers say. She would later die in 1965.
Certainly one of her son’s, William, “was actively looking for it till his demise in 2021, in accordance with the lawsuit.”
“The portray attained a legendary standing in Klimt’s catalog,” the submitting claims, “a ‘misplaced’ late masterpiece cited in books however not seen in dwelling reminiscence.”
However when Auktionshaus im Kinsky obtained the work, it stripped “Margarethe” from the title, claiming new analysis revealed her cousins could be the topic, Leahy’s go well with claims.
This identification disaster was a tactical maneuver, the submitting states.
In response to the public sale itemizing, the present proprietor — who the go well with alleges to be Eva Ropper of Vienna — contacted heirs “to agree on a ‘honest and simply resolution’ with all of them in 2023.”
Leahy, who claims that she reached out as soon as the public sale home started publicizing its “landmark” sale, was not included in any settlements, regardless of claiming to be the final blood inheritor to the Lieser household.
Plus, her go well with claims that the “unprecedented” transfer to promote “such a significant Klimt portray” via the comparatively small im Kinsky public sale home was truly a transfer to keep away from the strict pointers of worldwide retailers like Christie’s or Sotheby’s concerning looted artwork.
“Notably, Austria’s legal guidelines regarding restitution of Nazi looted artwork aren’t as stringent,” the go well with claims.
Leahy says attorneys for Ropper and im Kinsky have shut her out, leaving her with no alternative however to sue for possession of the misplaced work.
“Holocaust-era restitution instances aren’t nearly provenance,” says her lawyer, Oren J. Warshavsky, “they’re about folks, households, and property taken underneath coercion. Our consumer shouldn’t be asking for something extraordinary—solely to be acknowledged and included in a rightful course of that ought to have occurred a long time in the past.”
The public sale home didn’t reply to requests for remark by The Put up.
