Gustav Klimt painted "Portrait of Fräulein Lieser" in 1917 and had not finished it when he died in 1918

Gustav Klimt painted "Portrait of Fräulein Lieser" in 1917 and had not finished it when he died in 1918. The commission came from the wealthy Viennese Jewish Lieser family. For nearly a century the picture was known only from a black-and-white photograph of 1925: it vanished after the Anschluss and was presumed lost.

In 2024 the canvas resurfaced at the Viennese auction house Im Kinsky and went for €30 million, a record for auctions in Austria. But the buyer from Hong Kong subsequently backed out of the deal, and the picture was left unpaid for.

And now Patricia Leahy, who describes herself as the family's sole blood heir, has filed suit in New York against Im Kinsky and the consignor, the person who put the work up for sale. She demands restitution and alleges that the house changed the title, removing the name Margarethe, and rewrote the provenance in order to detach the painting from the history of Nazi plunder.

By way of comparison: another Klimt portrait, "Elisabeth Lederer", went for $236 million in 2025.

Naturally, one cannot help recalling on this occasion the remarkable film "Woman in Gold" with Helen Mirren, about the restitution of another Klimt, the "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer". Anyone who has not yet seen it must do so: one of the finest films about the postwar fates of European art