For the first time since its recent rediscovery, an early work by the renowned Austrian painter Gustav Klimt—believed lost since the 1930s—is on display.
The 1897 painting of Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona, a member of the Ga people of West Africa, in present-day Ghana, shows the prince in profile against loose floral brushstrokes. The tiny picture, which stands little over two feet tall and costs €15 million (about $16.3 million), is on show at the art fair TEFAF Maastricht in the Netherlands by the Viennese gallery Wienerroither & Kohlbacher (W&K).
When two collectors contacted W&K gallery with the framed picture in 2023, the gallery said in a news statement that it was “heavily soiled” and had a “barely visible” estate stamp by Klimt. Alfred Weidinger, an art historian who had been looking for the piece for twenty years, verified its authenticity for the gallery.
For the first time since its recent rediscovery, an early work by the renowned Austrian painter Gustav Klimt—believed lost since the 1930s—is on display. The 1897 painting of Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona, a member of the Ga people of West Africa, in present-day Ghana, shows the prince in profile against loose floral brushstrokes. The tiny picture, which stands little over two feet tall and costs €15 million (about $16.3 million), is on show at the art fair TEFAF Maastricht in the Netherlands by the Viennese gallery Wienerroither & Kohlbacher (W&K).
When two collectors contacted W&K gallery with the framed picture in 2023, the gallery said in a news statement that it was “heavily soiled” and had a “barely visible” estate stamp by Klimt. Alfred Weidinger, an art historian who had been looking for the piece for twenty years, verified its authenticity for the gallery.
Weidinger stated in the news release that Klimt’s stylistic change “towards decorative elements,” which are the defining characteristics of his later style, is reflected in the 1897 portrait. About 11 years later, the Austrian painter created “The Kiss,” a painting of a gilded pair that draws hundreds of thousands of people annually to Vienna’s Belvedere Museum. However, in 2023, his “last masterpiece”—a painting of an unnamed woman with a fan—broke records when it sold for £85.3 million ($108.4 million) in London, from the estate of Paul G. Allen, the late co-founder of Microsoft. It became the most expensive piece of art ever sold at a European auction, surpassing even the artist’s own auction record.
Another long-lost and rediscovered Klimt painting, “Portrait of Fräulein Lieser,” which is believed to be one of his last pieces, brought €30 million ($32 million) at auction last year.
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