Gustav Klimt 30 Million Euro Sale falls Through Amid Unresolved Nazi-Era Provenance

Vienna’s Im Kinsky auction house unveiled the portrait earlier this year. 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 agreed to the purchase on the condition that all restitution claims be settled.

Weeks later, the deal fell apart, the Austrian newspaper De Standard reported. 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 questionable provenance traces back to the Lieser family, wealthy Jewish industrialists in pre-war Vienna. Klimt painted the portrait 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.

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.