Considered lost since 1938, Gustav Klimt's portrait of a prince from Ghana is on public display again for the first time. Viennese art dealers are presenting the painting from a private Austrian collection at the TEFAF art fair in Maastricht, the Netherlands.
In 2021, a collector couple came to the W&K - Wienerroither & Kohlbacher gallery and presented a poorly framed and heavily soiled painting with a barely visible estate stamp by Gustav Klimt.
The Klimt expert Alfred Weidinger, author of the catalog raisonné published in 2007, identified the painting as the lost painting of an African prince, an important representative of the Osu (Ga) from Ghana, which he had been looking for for two decades.
The painting remained in Klimt's possession and was auctioned in Vienna in 1923 from his estate as "Portrait of a Negro, in three-quarter profile facing right, with a white coat around his shoulders".
In 1928, the painting is documented as a loan for the Klimt memorial exhibition at the Vienna Secession as the property of Ernestine Klein. She and her husband Felix Klein, who had the former Klimt studio in Vienna's Hietzing district converted into a villa, had to flee in 1938 due to their Jewish origins. They survived the war in Monaco. But their works of art remained missing.
Until the collector couple sought advice from W&K - Wienerroither & Kohlbacher. Legal uncertainties prevented the presentation at TEFAF 2024.
After negotiations, a restitution settlement was finally reached with the heirs of Ernestine Klein. The Federal Monuments Office has also approved the export. Nothing stands in the way of Klimt's African prince's grand appearance at the world's most important art and antiques fair in Maastricht until March 20.
For Alfred Weidinger, the portrait has a special significance: "The composition and painterly execution point to Klimt's turn to decorative elements, which were to characterize his later work, and are directly linked to his portraits of the following years. In terms of time and style, it is close to the famous portrait of Sonja Knips from 1898."
Main Image: Gustav Klimt portrait of Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona from 1897. (Bild: W&K – Wienerroither & Kohlbacher)
Anna Melnykova, "Palace of Labor (palats praci), architector I. Pretro, 1916", shot with analog Canon camera, 35 mm Fuji film in March 2022.
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