VIDEO: Long lost painting bought for R600-million at auction
The painting was thought to have been missing for 100 years.
It's not every day that close to a billion Rand is spent on one-of-a-kind pieces of art.
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Famous Austrian painter Gustav Klimt died before he could finish his painting of a young woman called, 'Portrait of Miss Lieser'.
There has always been a lot of debate about who the subject of the portrait was.
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It is speculated that it could have been the daughters of brothers Adolf and Justus Lieser, who were wealthy industrialists.
New research by the auction house into the history and provenance also opens up the possibility that Klimt's model could have been another member of the Lieser family: either Helene Lieser (1898-1962), the first-born of Henriette Amalie Lieser-Landau and Justus Lieser, or their younger daughter, Annie Lieser (1901-1972).
What happened to the painting after Klimt's death is the real mystery.
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The painting would have stayed in his studio, but in 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria, and the Lieser daughters returned to Vienna after World War 2 to claim their mother's assets, but the painting is never mentioned.
It has since been assumed that the painting was lost forever until it was discovered hanging in a private villa near Vienna.
It was these many ambiguities and historical gaps that prompted the current owners to contact the legal successors of the Lieser family and to agree on a 'fair and just solution' with them all in 2023.
The auction house Im Kinsky valued the piece at between €30-million and €50-million.
It was finally sold for €32-million (an estimated R600-million).
See the painting in all it's glory here:
Gustav Klimt's ‘Portrait of Miss Lieser,’ a painting of a young woman left unfinished when the Austrian artist died, sold at an auction for 30 million euros https://t.co/0mxpP2PEM2 pic.twitter.com/GJA8qqhfbE
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 24, 2024
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Main image courtesy of @AJEnglish/X