In Vienna, this summer I went to see the collection of Gustov Klimt paintings at the Belvedere Palace. While I admired Klimt's paintings hanging in the Palace, the most fascinating aspect of my visit there was learning about a painting which once hung in the Belvedere, Austria's prestigious national gallery and is now missing from its collection–the 1907 Klimt portrait of a Jewish woman (entitled "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I – see photo #1 – credit Wikimedia Commons) which the Nazis looted from its Jewish owner following Hitler's annexation of Austria in 1938.
The extraordinary tale of the history of this painting is uncovered by a well-researched book by Anne Marie O'Connor, entitled "The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer”, a book which I couldn't put down after visiting Belvedere.
This famous Klimt portrait depicts the daughter of one of the leading bankers of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Adele Bloch-Bauer who was the wife of a Viennese Jewish industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer (he made his fortune by refining sugar). Adele, who died in 1925 of meningitis at the age of 43, was a very close friend and patron of Klimt (and perhaps Adele and Klimt were lovers). It is possible Adele was also the model for Klimt's famous painting "The Kiss." (Note, that in 1907 when Klimt was painting this portrait of Adele, Adolf Hitler was refused entry to the Academy of fine Arts in Vienna.)
In 1923, two years before her death, Adele Bloch Bauer wrote a will expressing her desire to leave this portrait of herself by Klimt and other Klimt paintings to the Belvedere.
Following the 1938 Anschluss, the Nazis seized Ferdinand's assets, including this painting and they were "Aryanized". Ferdinand fled to Czechoslovakia and then Switzerland, where he died in 1945, leaving his entire estate to his brother's children. After Adele's death, Ferdinand had left the painting in her bedroom untouched with other Klimt paintings as a memorial to her in his Vienna home, and from there it was seized by the Nazis.
Hitler and the Nazis weren't interested in keeping the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I and other Klimts as part of their private collections. As Hugh Eakin describes in the Wall Street Journal:
"Nazi aesthetics, however, had little patience for Secessionist art, and when museum officials were sent to inspect the Bloch-Bauer house, they ignored the Klimts. The paintings were only appropriated subsequently in a dirty deal between an illegitimate son of the artist, who had become a National Socialist die-hard, and the Belvedere, which had meanwhile been taken over by the aptly named Hitler acolyte Bruno Grimschitz."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204795304577221082083394156
With the Bloch-Bauer Klimt's in their possession, the Belvedere during Nazi rule staged one of the largest exhibitions of Klimt's work ever mounted. But under Nazi rule the name of this portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer had to be changed to hide the fact it portrayed a Jewish woman. Accordingly the "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" was "reinvented" and renamed as an unidentified "Lady in Gold." Thus the Jewish aspect of the painting was completely suppressed.
After the war, the Belvedere, which had bought the painting from the Nazis, cited Adele's 1923 will, asserted title to the painting.
Austria's handling of Nazi looted art came under increased scrutiny in the 1990's and in 1998 Austria passed a new art restitution law .The Bloch Bauer descendants, all living out of Austria, in 1998 asserted claim to five Klimt paintings including the "Lady in Gold". Bloch-Bauer's niece Maria Altmann, who had struggling to make ends meet selling clothes in Los Angeles after escaping the Holocaust, then age 90, lead the effort and petitioned for the return of the "Lady in Gold" and four other Klimt paintings. In 2004, the US Supreme Court upheld her right to sue the Austrian government and after a long legal battle in January 2006 an Austrian restitution panel ruled in favour of the heirs. The panel found that although Adele had wanted the paintings to be in the Belvedere, it was just a wish, and Ferdinand's last will specifically overruled this request. Belvedere now had to return the "Lady in Gold" to the Bloch-Bauer heirs.
In a documentary "Art of the Heist; The Lady in Gold" Electric Sky, Nigel James director/Producer, posted on you tube made before she died, Maria Altman said she believed the Austrian government was hoping she "would die" before the legal battle ended. But, as she said, "I didn't do them that favour."
Interestingly enough, when I was in the Belvedere gift shop I could find many items with the image of the "Lady in Gold" on them, despite the fact that the painting is no longer in the Belvedere. At a gift shop across the street from the Belvedere I bought a little dish with the face of the "Lady in Gold” on it, so that I could tell my children the story surrounding the painting.
Once the Lady in Gold was returned to the Bloch Bauer descendants, it was put up for sale and according to press reports Ronald Lauder bought the painting for US$135 million to his Neue Galerie in New York City in June 2006, which made it at that time the most expensive painting ever bought in history for about 4 months. There the portrait of Adele Bauer Bloch has been on display at the gallery since July 2006. "This is our Mona Lisa," Lauder, whose parents founded a cosmetics firm, told the New York Times in 2006.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/19/arts/design/19klim.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2
What has fascinated me most about this whole story is that the face of the Lady of Gold can be found everywhere in souvenir shops in downtown Vienna and art print shops- I couldn't help but notice it everywhere-, such that the painting is probably the most high profile painting seen in Vienna. In that regard, with his art, Klimt succeeded in immortalizing the face of a Jewish woman, one that can be seen in central Vienna long after Hitler's face can no longer be seen there. Adele's iconic face has been immortalized notwithstanding that Hitler was successful in decimating the Jewish community of Vienna. (Prior to the Holocaust, there were about 191,000 Jews in Austria, most of whom resided in the capital city of Vienna, such that they made up about 2.8% of the Austrian population, while today there are only about 10,000 Jews in Vienna). If anything, it was the Nazi seizure of Klimt's painting of Adele that has made this Jewish woman even more immortalized than it otherwise would have been.
Adele Bloch-Bauer's portrait will become even more immortalized now that there will be a new movie titled "Women in Gold" that is based on part of Anne-Marie O’Connor’s 2012 book about the quest to recover this Klimt masterpiece ( the Klimt restitution case comprises about one third of O'Conner's historical book). The movie will star Helen Mirrin, http://tabletmag.com/scroll/187917/helen-mirrens-new-nazi-art-movie
Also of interest is how O'Connor's book " Lady in Gold" forcefully outlines the great extent to which the Nazis pursued Jewish wealth, through the recollection of Maria Altmann. Shortly after her marriage Altmann's gorgeous new apartment was seized and lived in by the Austrian Gestapo chief , Felix Landau , who had been put in charge of looting Jewish assets. Her husband was sent to the Dachau concentration camp, in order to to help the Nazis track down his brother's foreign bank accounts.When his brother made a deal, he was released and the he and Maria managed to escape and the couple ended up living in Los Angeles. (Maria Altmann died there in 2011.) In the documentary by Nigel James, Altman describes how Adele's beautiful diamond necklace with matching earrings that she had just received from her uncle for her wedding present were taken by the Nazis and "it went to Mrs Goering", whose husband Herman founded the Gestapo in 1933.
Another fascinating aspect about this case of looted Nazi art is that the lawyer for Maria Altmann was a Jew, Randal Shoenberg, who was the nephew of famous Viennese Jewish composer Arnold Shoenberg. With the rise of the Nazis by 1938 Arnold Schoenberg's works were labelled as degenerate music because he was Jewish. Luckily Arnold Sheonberg was able to escape to the United States in 1934. ( In the documentary, Maria Altmann had always known Arnold Shoenberg who had been part of Adele's social circle.) Because his own family had suffered under the Nazis Randal Shoenberg was prepared to gamble his career and take on this case on contingency if it ever went to court.
Finally, on the question of whether Adele and Klimt were lovers, Maria Altmann told the New York Times, " She remembers asking her mother about the rumored love affair between Klimt and her aunt. "My mother got mad and said, 'How dare you ask such a thing? It was an intellectual friendship," she recalled. "But I think it was very possible there was a romance."
