When Gustav Klimt’s long-lost portrait of an African prince was unveiled by a Vienna-based gallery in March, the newly restored work shone fresh light on the unedifying popularity of colonial “human zoos” in 19th-century Europe. Now, the canvas is drawing attention to the murkiness of today’s international art trade and its legal and even political ramifications in a case that also raises questions about the lingering effects of Nazi-era art looting.
The painting, an early Klimt depicting a prince of the Osu people from West Africa’s Gold Coast, was exhibited by the dealership Wienerroither & Kohlbacher at the TEFAF Maastricht fair, priced at 15 million euros, about $16.4 million.
The gallery, known as W&K, said at Maastricht that the Klimt had come to it from a collector who had agreed to a private restitution claim with the heirs of the Viennese family that owned the painting during the Nazi era. The gallery said at Maastricht that “active negotiations” for the Klimt’s purchase were underway with a “major museum.”
The painting was one of the most talked-about items at the fair and attracted international media attention. But it was still on sale when W&K brought it to Manhattan in May for TEFAF’s New York edition.
Six months later, on Nov. 12, Austria’s national broadcaster reported that the Vienna Public Prosecutor’s Office had ordered that the painting be seized. The order followed a request from the Hungarian authorities, which have filed a criminal complaint against the owner, who they say illegally exported the work from their country after misleading them “with manipulated images and false information.”
Present-day Austria and Hungary were united under the Austro-Hungarian Empire when Klimt, a Vienna native, created the painting in 1897, and now both countries are claiming that heritage.
“We will not allow Hungary’s cultural values to be taken out of the country by deception or trickery,” said Lanszki Rego, the minister responsible for heritage in Hungary, on Facebook. “This is an important step toward returning this valuable work, which is unique in Klimt’s oeuvre, to our country,” Rego added.
Ebi Kohlbacher, one of W&K’s co-founders, described the Hungarian claim to the painting as “a farce in every respect” and “completely unfounded.” He said in an email this week, “This work of art is clearly an Austrian painting by an Austrian artist, created in Austria, whose content relates exclusively to Austrian history.”
W&K said that the Austrian authorities had not physically seized the Klimt, but they have prohibited its sale. It remains unsold in the gallery.
When — or if — the painting is sold, the private restitution agreement negotiated by the painting’s owner, who W&K identifies only as “Peter B.” will come into effect, and the sale proceeds will be split between him, the gallery and the heirs, according to W&K. (Another long-lost Klimt portrait, sold at auction in Vienna last year for $37 million, was subject to a similar private restitution agreement.)
The disputed portrait of Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona was unsold in Klimt’s studio when the artist died in 1918, according to Alfred Weidinger, the author of a 2007 book on Klimt’s paintings and a 27-page dossier on the portrait’s history and provenance.
According to his research, the picture entered the collection of Felix and Ernestine Klein, members of a wealthy Jewish family that owned businesses and property in Vienna and Budapest in the 1920s. When Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the couple fled Vienna, Weidinger’s dossier says, leaving the Klimt painting among the possessions they asked Fedor Vest, a Hungarian diplomat, to look after. It adds that Vest took it to Hungary, where it remained after the war.
Despite repeated attempts by the Klein family to secure its return, Vest held onto the Klimt, according to Weidinger, and since Vest’s death in 1969, the painting has been in the possession of four different Hungarians whom Weidinger calls “custodians.”
In 2022, the individual known as “Custodian 3” commissioned Zsofia Vegvari, the head of the Budapest-based Painting Examination Laboratory, to assess the artwork. “Our laboratory carried out not only material analyses, but also art-historical research and comparisons based on archival photographs,” Vegvari said in an email.
“Using all available documentation, we identified the painting as ‘African Prince,’ a Klimt work from around 1900 long-considered lost.” Vegvari added, “I reported this in writing to the client.”
Weidinger’s report says that in July 2023, the painting was sold to “Custodian 4” — the same person whom W&K later identified as “Peter B.” The Hungarian authorities granted an export license for the work based on a photograph and a description, and the painting, still in unrestored condition, traveled to Austria by the end of that month, according to Weidinger.
But this May, articles began to appear in the Hungarian and Austrian press suggesting possible irregularities in the export process. Olga Kronsteiner, an investigative journalist in Vienna, reported on the content of the export license in Der Standard and cited a partly blacked-out export application in which the painting’s then-owner, “Custodian 4,” described it as an undated work by an unknown artist worth 125 euros, about $145.
In July, Hungary initiated criminal proceedings against the painting’s former owner. In a statement, Janos Lazar, a powerful minister in the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, vowed to “file a formal complaint, initiate the amendment of the relevant legislation and propose the classification of the painting as protected.”
But the situation is complicated. By classifying a long-lost Austrian painting that was removed from Vienna during the Nazi occupation as a protected item of Hungarian cultural heritage, could the Hungarian authorities be seen to be condoning Nazi-era war looting?
When contacted by email, the ministry declined to comment on that issue.
“The question is whether the Hungarian state is setting itself against the interests of the descendants of the Jewish Klein family and thereby, in effect, refusing to comply with the Washington Principles,” Weidinger, the Klimt scholar, said in an email, referring to the internationally agreed guidelines for returning art looted during the Nazi era. The principles were endorsed in 1998 by 44 countries, including Hungary.
“That,” Weidinger said, “would be a development of fundamental importance.”
Scott Reyburn is a London-based freelance journalist who writes about the art world, artists and their markets.
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