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(Bild: APA/EVA MANHART)

Gustav Klimt's unfinished late work "Portrait of Miss Lieser", which had been hidden away in private Austrian ownership for decades, was sold on Wednesday afternoon at the Vienna auction house im Kinsky as the conclusion and highlight of a "Gustav Klimt Sale" for 30 million euros, the lowest estimate. According to im Kinsky, the purchase price including buyer's premium amounted to 37.406 million euros. The painting will go to a private collection in Hong Kong, to Rosaline Wong's HomeArt.

The estimated price had been between 30 and 50 million euros, and proceeds of up to 70 million euros had been considered conceivable in advance. Auctioneer Michael Kovacek had started at 28 million euros, but only received three bids in total. One bidder in the room won the auction. This was enough to set a new record for the auction house at the Kinsky and an auction record for Austria. Previously, the painting "Man who must choose between virtues and vices" by Frans Francken II was the most expensive painting ever auctioned in Austria. It was sold at Dorotheum in 2010 for 7,022,300 euros.

Klimt's record works
Paintings by the world-famous artist (1862-1918) have repeatedly set records in recent years. In June 2023, Klimt's painting "Lady with Fan" achieved the highest price ever for a work of art auctioned in Europe at a Sotheby's auction in London with a hammer price of £74 million, or £85.305 million (around €99.33 million) including surcharges.

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The auction record for Klimt is held by the painting "Buchenwald" (Birch Forest) from the extensive collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who died in 2018, which was knocked down at Christie's in New York in November 2022 for 105 million dollars (104.6 million euros). It is one of the five paintings for which the Republic of Austria had fought a long restitution dispute against the heirs of the Bloch-Bauer family and which was restituted to the heirs of Maria Altmann in 2006. Among them was the portrait "Adele Bloch-Bauer I", the "Golden Adele", which went to Ronald Lauder at a price of 135 million dollars as the world's most expensive painting outside of an auction at the time. The portrait "Adele Bloch-Bauer II" was bought by US media star Oprah Winfrey at Christie's in New York in 2006 for 87.9 million dollars and sold on to a Chinese collector over ten years later for 150 million dollars.

Not all items sold
The auction house had welcomed 15,000 interested parties over the past nine days, explained Managing Director Michael Kovacek at the beginning of the auction. For this reason, the auction house intends - "if we are allowed to" - to exhibit the Klimt painting again next week for four days (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday). Some of the 19 lots, including a study for "Fräulein Lieser", remained unsold.

The unsigned painting "Fräulein Lieser", measuring 140 x 80 cm and dating from 1917 and thus from the world-famous artist's late work, was presented to an international audience in London, Zurich and Hong Kong. The painting was commissioned by a member of the Jewish industrialist family Lieser. It is not entirely certain whether the sitter, who was apparently portrayed in nine sittings, is Helene or Annie Lieser, one of the two daughters of art patron Henriette Lieser, or her niece Margarethe Constance Lieser, daughter of Adolf Lieser.

Inherited from relatives
According to the auction house, the current owners inherited it from distant relatives around two years ago, before which it had been passed down through several generations. The portrait of a young woman in a severe frontal pose against a red background, with a scarf decorated with flowers draped over her shoulders, was shown to the public, presumably at a Viennese art exhibition in 1925. Its exact fate between 1925 and the 1960s is unknown - as is its whereabouts during the Nazi regime. As a result of the gaps in the provenance of the painting, the proceeds are to be divided among several possible legal successors on the basis of an agreement in accordance with the so-called "Washington Principles". An export license has already been granted in advance by the Federal Monuments Office.