A portrait from Klimt's last period thought to have been lost for nearly 100 years will go to auction in Vienna

Going up for auction on April 24, 2024 at the im Kinsky auction house in Vienna is a painting by Gustav Klimt thought to have been lost for about a hundred years; it was privately owned and therefore not available on the art market. It is the Portrait of Fräulein Lieser, one of Klimt’s last works, thus belonging to his last creative period. The painting will be sold at auction with an estimate of 30 to 50 million euros by the current owners (private Austrian citizens) and the legal successors of Adolf and Henriette Lieser based on an agreement in accordance with the 1998 Washington Principles.

The Lieser family belonged to the circle of wealthy Viennese upper-class society among which Klimt found his patrons and clients. The brothers Adolf and Justus Lieser were among the leading industrialists of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Henriette Amalie Lieser-Landau, called Lilly, was married to Justus Lieser until 1905 and was a patron. Catalogs of Klimt paintings state that Adolf Lieser commissioned Gustav Klimt to paint a portrait of his 18-year-old daughter Margarethe Constance. However, some suggest that patron Henriette Amalie (Lilly) Lieser commissioned Klimt to paint a portrait of one of her two daughters. In the first catalog raisonné of Klimt’s paintings, published in 1967 by Fritz Novotny and Johannes Dobai, the model portrayed in the painting to be auctioned is labeled Fräulein Lieser. Authors of more recent works catalogs (Weidinger 2007 and Natter 2012) have identified the model as Margarethe Constance Lieser. New auction house research on the history and provenance also opens up the possibility that the model for this painting may have been another young lady belonging to the Lieser family-Helene Lieser (1898-1962), the eldest daughter of Henriette Amalie Lieser-Landau and Justus Lieser, or their youngest daughter, Annie Lieser (1901-1972).

The portrait, documented in catalogs of Gustav Klimt’s paintings, was known, however, only through a black-and-white photograph. The latter is preserved in the archives of the Austrian National Library. It was probably taken in 1925, on the occasion of Otto Kallir-Nirenstein’s exhibition at the Neue Galerie in Vienna showing works by Klimt. The inventory card of the negative contains the note: “1925 in possession of Mrs. Lieser, IV, Argentinierstrasse 20.” The exact fate of the painting after 1925 is unclear, however. What is known is that it was acquired by a legal predecessor of the transferor in the 1960s and passed to the present owner through three successive successions.

Klimt probably began making the work in May 1917, as between April and May 1917, the model visited Klimt’s studio in Hietzing nine times to pose for him and at least twenty-five preliminary studies were made. The young woman is portrayed frontally against a red, undefined background. She wears a cloak richly decorated with flowers. Strong complementary tones define the painting’s color palette, and there is a contrast between Fräulein Lieser’s face, rendered with defined strokes and in a naturalistic manner, and between other parts that show free and loose brushwork reflecting the late period of Klimt’s artistic activity. When the artist died of a stroke on Feb. 6, 1918, he left the painting, with small unfinished parts, in his studio. After his death the painting was donated to the family that had commissioned it.

Before being sold at auction on April 24, 2024, the Portrait of Fräulein Lieser will be presented in several locations internationally (in Switzerland, Germany, Britain and Hong Kong) in collaboration with LGT Bank.

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A portrait from Klimt's last period thought to have been lost for nearly 100 years will go to auction in Vienna

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