A woman claiming to be the sole heir to the Austrian subject of a long-lost Gustav Klimt painting has sued for restitution of the portrait, which came to auction at the small Austrian auction house Im Kinsky in 2024.
The painting sold on a single bid for $37.5 million, setting a record for any artwork sold at auction in Austria, but the bidder, a Hong Kong collector represented by Patti Wong and Associates, withdrew their offer after the sale.
Patricia J. Leahy filed a suit in New York State Supreme Court on behalf of herself and others.
They are suing Austria’s Eva Ropper and the auction house.
Leahy is represented by Cleveland-based firm Baker & Hostetler.
Nazi Seizure and Lost Artwork
The Lieser family of Jewish industrialists was persecuted by the Nazis, including being imprisoned, and lost almost all their possessions to Nazi seizure.
Adolf Lieser, Margarethe’s father, commissioned the portrait; Leahy says she is his sole great-grandchild.
Before the Vienna sale, the painting had been out of sight for a century.
Kinsky listed the painting without the subject’s given name and “eschewing the accepted provenance.”
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They offered a new interpretation of the painting, saying it may have shown a different subject.
Leahy’s Claim and Auction Controversy
Leahy claims she was never contacted and in fact contested the sale before it went to the auction block.
Leahy’s lawyers describe the $37.5 million sale price as “well under market.”
In fact, Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914–16) sold for $236.4 million at Sotheby’s New York in November.
His 1917 Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan) fetched $108.6 million at Sotheby’s London in 2023.
They became the most expensive paintings ever sold at auction in their respective locations.
Auction House and Legal Action
The buyer tried to reach an agreement with all potential claimants, but withdrew their bid when that attempt failed.
The complaint says that the painting is still in Kinsky’s possession but says that counsel for Kinsky and Ropper “have stopped responding to communications.”
The artist began his portrait sessions with Lieser in 1917; small portions remained unfinished and the painting unsigned when he died in 1918.
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It was shown in a Klimt retrospective in Vienna in 1925, then disappeared from public view until Im Kinsky offered it for sale.
No one has claimed possession of it, so there is no evidence the Lieser family ever willingly gave anyone else possession of it.
Margarethe married Baron Henrik Gutmann de Gelse et Beliscse in 1921.
They had a child, William de Gelsey, and all three survived the Holocaust and moved to the UK.
De Gelsey always claimed the painting depicted his mother.
He tried in vain to find the painting until he died without heirs in 2021.
Leahy is the daughter of Hans, Margarethe’s brother.
When the painting came to auction, it garnered international news coverage.
The house said that a family in Austria had acquired it in the early 1960s, without elaborating on how they came to be in possession of it.
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Ropper apparently bought it in 2022 and consigned it to Kinsky.
Having done “fresh research,” the house claimed it could be a depiction of one of Margarethe Lieser’s cousins.
The complaint says there is no evidence that either of them ever claimed to be the subject.
The house never consulted the foremost experts on Klimt, says the complaint, and acknowledged that “the identity of Klimt’s sitter is not completely certain.”
A footnote in the auction catalogue noted that the house had “not been able to clarify the precise provenance of the painting following the exhibition at the Neue Galerie in 1925.”
It acknowledged that the painting’s “partially unexplained history” could leave it subject to restitution claims.
The house even “acknowledged that it believed that it was unlikely that the painting had left the Lieser family’s possession prior to the Anschluss,” says the filing.
Austria’s laws concerning restitution of Nazi looted art are not as stringent as those of other jurisdictions, as outlined by the US Department of State.
