A Gustav Klimt portrait stolen during the Nazi era reappears.
The Tefaf fair in Maastricht is showing the painting, a work that had been missing since 1938.
Maastricht (Netherlands)Another of the surprises of the edition of the Tefaf art fair, in Maastricht, It is a portrait that Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) painted in 1897 of Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona, which had been missing since 1938. It is for sale by the Austrian gallery Wienerroither & Kohlbacher for 15 million euros, one of the highest prices. The history of the painting is marked by Nazism: the owner in the 1930s, Ernestine Klein, of Jewish origin, had to flee Vienna and took refuge in Monaco. Upon returning home, she realized that the painting and other possessions had been stolen.
Sources at the gallery explain that a collector brought the portraits to them in 2023 and that, thanks to Professor Alfred Weidinger, they were able to confirm that it is a work by Klimt that was part of the tribute paid to him in 1928, ten years after his passion. At that time, it was already the property of Ernestine Klein. She and her husband, Fleix Klein, settled in the villa in the Hietzing district where Klimt had had his studio.
The gallery owners confirmed that it was a work stolen during the Nazis and began the process of returning the painting, which depicts a member of the royal family of the Osu tribe of Ghana, to its owner's heirs.
Gustav Klimt met William Nii Nortey at a folklore show in Vienna. A colleague, Franz Natsch, also met, so the two agreed to paint the prince. While Natsch's portrait, held at the MNAHA in Luxembourg, is frontal, Klimt immortalized the prince from three-quarters and signed the painting in the middle of the canvas.
The portrait also recalls how Klimt, Franz Natsch, and his brother Ernst trained at the conservative Vienna School of Applied Arts, and how he gradually distanced himself from them artistically, until the turning point of the founding of the Secession. It is a decorative element in Klimt's later work. Everything indicates that Klimt kept it with him until his death, and that the painting was auctioned at the sale of his legacy held in Vienna in 1923.
