A 2024 Gustav Klimt sale, worth $32 million, has fallen through after the buyer remained dissatisfied with the work’s provenance.
In 2024, a sale for Portrait of Fräulein Lieser (1917) by Gustav Klimt was held at im Kinsky auction house in Vienna, Austria. The work ended up being sold for €30 million ($32.15 million). Despite ending up at the most expensive work ever sold in Austria, the painting still fetched the lower end of its €30 million -€50 million estimate. It was bought by an anonymous buyer from Hong Kong.
However, establishing a clear provenance quickly became the proverbial bone in the throat for the auction house. The painting was last seen in a black-and-white picture from 1925 – a whooping 100 years ago. The photograph was taken by the Leiser family, who owned the painting at the time. The person who sold the painting in the recent auction only inherited the work in 2022. Between these two dates, there were large periods of time where the provenance of the painting is unclear.
Notably, the whereabouts of the painting is unknown during the Nazis invasion of Austria during World War II, which caused many Austrian jews to flee the country leaving their belongings behind. The auction house tried to broker an arrangement between the current holder and the heirs of the Leiser family to share the profits from the work.
However, the negotiations went nowhere, and ultimately the buyer has backed out, causing the deal to fall through. It is estimated that the cancelled sale has cost the im Kinsky auction house losses upwards of $1.2 million. The auction house is yet to comment on the incident.
