The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907) by Gustav Klimt

On December 2, we are sharing the story of the resitution of looted artwork The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907) by Gustav Klimt.

Also known as The Lady in Gold because of its gold leaf details, the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Gustav Klimt (1903-1907) holds an incredible yet sad story.

Considered as one of Klimt’s masterpieces, it depicts Adele Bloch-Bauer, a close friend of Klimt who came from a wealthy Austrian family. The painting was commissioned by Adele’s husband Ferdinand in 1903, meant to be an anniversary gift to her parents. Klimt found inspiration from his journey to Ravenna, Italy, where he visited the Church of San Vitale, filled with Byzantine mosaics. He painted Adele wearing the diamond chocker her husband had given to her as a wedding present. The Bloch-Bauer couple was then very renowned in Vienna for its art collection. 

The portrait was exhibited for the first time at the Mannheim International Art Show in 1907. It was finally hung for years at the Bloch-Blauer’s residence. Adele passed away in the 1920s. In 1938 during the Nazi regime, Ferdinand had to flee to Switzerland and the family assets were frozen and seized by the Nazis. The painting was sent on the Führer’s orders to the Galerie Belvedere where it was renamed “Lady in Gold” to erase any reference to its original Jewish name and provenance. 

After the war, the Austrian government issued its “Annulment Act”: it stated that all looted art transactions during WWII should be cancelled and the related artworks could be claimed by their original owners, subject to several conditions. The Bloch-Bauer family claimed for the return of their collection but was not able to get the Klimt portrait back.

Decades later, in 1998, Austria issued a new Act in favor of art restitution. The niece of Adele and Ferdinand, Maria Altmann lived in the United States at the time. She hired a new lawyer to file a claim for the restitution of The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. At first, the Austrian commitee for restitution refused her request, considering that Adele Bloch-Bauer’s original will gave the portrait along with several other Klimt paintings to the Austrian State Gallery in Vienna. But in fact, Adele Bloch-Bauer wasn’t the owner as it officially belonged to her husband.

Thus, in response, Maria Altmann filed in March 2000 a claim against Austria to restitute the artwork. To avoid the prohibitive costs of filing in Austria, Altmann filed her claim in the United States. After four years of legal battle, the claim was brought before the U.S. Supreme Court who decided that the painting was indeed stolen and Altmann’s claim was receivable. The parties then agreed for arbitration. The arbitrators declared that five out of the six paintings from the Bloch-Bauer collection had to be returned by Austria. This decision became a  landmark in restitution cases.

In 2006, following this decision, the paintings were exported to the United States and lent for exhibition by Maria Altmann to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In June of that same year, she sold the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer to businessman Ronald Lauder for $135 million, for Lauder’s own public art museum: the Neue Galerie in New York. The price was considered a record at the time. As of today, the Portrait is still exhibited at this place.

When Altmann was asked what she meant to do once she would be able to obtain the restitution of the paintings, she had said: “I would not want any private person to buy these paintings … It is very meaningful to me that they are seen by anybody who wants to see them, because that would have been the wish of my aunt”. Altmann passed away in 2011. As of today, the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer is still on permanent public view at the Galerie, as per Maria Altmann and her family’s wishes.

Sources: 

Official website of the Neue Galerie in New York (https://www.neuegalerie.org/womaningold)

Stealing Klimt (2007), a documentary about Maria Altmann’s battle for restitution.

Paul Arendt, “Austria loses fight to keep Klimt’s £170m gilded masterpieces”, in The Guardian, March 21, 2006

Pamela Kort (Collectif), Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, Neue Galerie Museum, 2007

Anne-Marie O’Connor, The Lady in Gold — The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, Bloch-Bauer, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, February 7, 2012

Jason Edward Kaufman, “Lauder pays $135m for Bloch-Bauer Klimt”, in The Art Newspaper, July 1, 2006

Carol Vogel, “Lauder Pays $135 Million, a Record, for a Klimt Portrait”, in The New York Times, June 19, 2006