Bildnis Fräulein Lieser

Gustav Klimt · 1917

Bildnis Fräulein Lieser - Gustav Klimt

A young woman faces us against a deep red ground, a flowered cloak around her shoulders. Klimt left her unsigned in his studio when he died, and for nearly a century she was known only from an old black-and-white photograph.

The story behind the painting

Klimt painted the portrait in 1917, the year before his death; the sitter is thought to have visited his studio nine times in April and May. He left it unsigned, and after he died in 1918 it was given to the family. The young woman is believed to be a member of the Lieser family, Viennese industrialists. Who exactly she is remains disputed. The auction house im Kinsky says she is Helene, daughter of Justus and Henriette Lieser, because Henriette commissioned it. The Klimt expert Tobias G. Natter argues she is Margarethe Constance Lieser, citing two independent witnesses, including Margarethe's sister-in-law, who named her twice in 1984.

What to look for

The canvas, 140 by 80 cm, shows a three-quarter-length figure in a frontal pose against a red background, a cloak decorated with flowers draped over her shoulders. The palette is typical of Klimt's late work. Look closely at the background: faint pencil shapes suggest he meant to keep elaborating it, so you are seeing a portrait still in progress. The art historian Dobai notes that the composition, and especially the position of the hands, recalls Klimt's portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer II and Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt.

Meaning and intent

Unfinished works let us stand beside the painter at his easel. Here the warm red field and the flowered cloak are set down, while the sketched shapes behind wait for ornament that never came. The portrait carries both Klimt's last years and the unanswered question of its sitter. Margarethe's son, the financier William de Gelsey, had no doubt the girl was his mother, who often spoke to him about the painting; he searched for it all his life.

Legacy

After a Klimt exhibition at the Neue Galerie in Vienna in 1925, the portrait entered a private collection, and only a black-and-white photograph recorded it. After the Anschluss in 1938 the Lieser family was persecuted under Nazi laws; Henriette Lieser was deported to Riga in 1942 and killed there in 1943. What happened to the painting between 1925 and 1960 is unknown. It was acquired around 1960 and resurfaced in 2024, a year after de Gelsey's death, when an Austrian owner approached im Kinsky. It was auctioned in Vienna in April 2024 under the Washington Principles, but disputes over provenance and family claims continued afterwards.

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Über den Künstler

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)

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