Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I
Artist Gustav Klimt
Year 1907
Type Oil, silver, and gold on canvas
Dimensions 138 cm × 138 cm (54 in × 54 in)
Location Neue Galerie, New York

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is a 1907 painting by Gustav Klimt. The first of two portraits Klimt painted of Bloch-Bauer, it has been referred to as the final and most fully representative work of his golden phase.[1]

Adele Bloch-Bauer (1881–1925) was a refined art-loving Viennese salon lady, a patron and close friend of Gustav Klimt.[2]

The painting

Klimt took three years to complete the painting; preliminary drawings for it date from 1903/4.[3] It measures 54" x 54" [138 x 138 cm] and is made of oil and gold on canvas, showing elaborate and complex ornamentation as seen in the Jugendstil style. Klimt was a member of the Vienna Secession, a group of artists that broke away from the traditional way of painting. The picture was painted in Vienna and commissioned by Adele's husband Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer.[4] As a wealthy industrialist who had made his fortune in the sugar industry, he sponsored the arts and favored and supported Gustav Klimt. Adele Bloch-Bauer[5] became the only model who was painted twice by Klimt when he completed a second picture of her, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II, in 1912.

Ownership of the painting

Public poster referencing the departure of the painting from Austria

In her will, Adele Bloch-Bauer asked her husband to donate the Klimt paintings to the Austrian State Gallery upon his death.[6] She died in 1925 from meningitis. When the Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938 in the action known as the Anschluss, her widowed husband fled to Prague and subsequently to Zurich. Most of his properties in Austria, including his Klimt paintings, were confiscated and the attorney Friedrich Führer designated to administer their sale or disposal on behalf of the German state. In 1941, it was acquired by the Austrian state gallery, housed in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna.[7]

Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer died in November 1945 in Zurich. In his 1945 testament, he designated his nephew and nieces, including Maria Altmann, as the heirs of his estate.[8]

In 2000, following administrative impedance by the Austrian authorities to her claims for restitution of the seized works,[9] Maria Altmann sued Austria in US Court for ownership of Adele Bloch-Bauer I and other paintings from her uncle's collection. As Bloch-Bauer's pictures had remained in Austria, the Austrian government took the position that the testament of Adele Bloch-Bauer had determined that these pictures were to stay there. After a court battle, binding arbitration by a panel of Austrian judges established in 2006 that Maria Altmann was the rightful owner of this and four other paintings by Klimt.[10]

In June 2006 the work was sold for US$135 million to Ronald Lauder for the Neue Galerie in New York City, at the time a record price for a painting.[11] It has been on display at the Neue Galerie since July 2006.[12]

Some in the art world criticized the heirs' decision to sell all of the restituted paintings: specifically, New York Times chief art critic Michael Kimmelman described the heirs as "cashing in", and thus transforming a "story about justice and redemption after the Holocaust" into "yet another tale of the crazy, intoxicating art market". Kimmelman wrote: "Wouldn't it have been remarkable (I'm just dreaming here) if the heirs had decided instead to donate one or more of the paintings to a public institution?"[13]

Film

Maria Altmann's story is dramatized in the 2015 film Woman in Gold, starring Helen Mirren as Maria and Ryan Reynolds as her lawyer, E. Randol Schoenberg.

Her story has also been recounted in three documentary films. Adele's Wish[14] by filmmaker Terrence Turner, who is the husband of Altmann's great-niece, was released in 2008. Adele's Wish featured interviews with Altmann, Schoenberg and leading experts from around the world. Altmann's story was also the subject of the documentary Stealing Klimt which was released in 2007. That movie also featured interviews with Altmann, Schoenberg, and others who were closely involved with the story.

The piece was also featured in the 2006 documentary The Rape of Europa, which dealt with the massive theft of art in Europe by the Nazi government during World War II.

Books

This piece is featured in the memoir of Gregor Collins, The Accidental Caregiver: How I Met, Loved, and Lost Legendary Holocaust Refugee Maria Altmann, published on August 15, 2012.[15]

The tale of the painting and those involved with it is covered in detail in the book by Anne-Marie O'Connor, The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, published on February 7, 2012.[16]

This work as well as other stories of the clashes between the heirs determined to retrieve their inheritance and the current owners are told by Melissa Müller and Monika Tatzkow in Lost Lives, Lost Art: Jewish Collectors, Nazi Art Theft, and the Quest for Justice, published by The Vendome Press on September 1, 2010. [17]

See also

Relevant links:

References

  1. ↑ Partsch, Susanna. Klimt: Life and Work, p. 242. Bracken Books, London, 1989. ISBN 1 85170 286 5
  2. ↑ Shapira, Elana (1 March 2009). "Adele Bloch-Bauer.". Jewish Women's Archive, Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
  3. ↑ Partsch, 242
  4. ↑ Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer was born Ferdinand Bloch, the son of David Bloch (also known as Abraham Bloch), a banker and sugar factory owner, and his wife Marie, née Straschnow. Ferdinand married Adele Bauer, the daughter of Moritz Bauer (director of the Vienna bank Wiener Bankverein) and his wife Jeanette, née Honig. When Ferdinand married Adele, both adopted the surname Bloch-Bauer.
  5. ↑ Her name is pronounced as [aˈdeːlə blɔx ˈbaʊ̯ɐ] in German.
  6. ↑ "Last Will 1923". Adele.at. 1923-01-19. Retrieved 2011-05-15.
  7. ↑ "Ruling of the Austrian arbitration court". Austrian arbitration court, Vienna, 2006. Retrieved 23 April 2015.
  8. ↑ "Bloch-Bauer 1945 testament". Arthistory.about.com. Retrieved 2011-05-15.
  9. ↑ The admissibility of the US Case under US Jurisdiction was predicated in the extreme costs imposed on her by the Austrian authorities
  10. ↑ "List and Pictures of Klimt Paintings ("Amalie" not part of the five pictures), Photo of Adele Bloch-Bauer, Photo of Klimt". Adele.at. Retrieved 2011-05-15.
  11. ↑ Vogel, Carol (19 June 2006). "NY Times report from June 19, 2006". Nytimes.com. Retrieved 15 May 2011.
  12. ↑ "The Ronald S. Lauder Collection: Selections from the 3rd Century BC to the 20th Century/Germany, Austria, and France". Neue Galerie.
  13. ↑ Kimmelman, Michael (2006-09-19). "Klimts Go to Market; Museums Hold Their Breath". New York Times. Retrieved 2011-05-15.
  14. ↑ adeleswish.com
  15. ↑ http://www.amazon.com/The-Accidental-Caregiver-Legendary-Holocaust-ebook/dp/B0092GS96K
  16. ↑ "The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]". Retrieved 2013-01-24.
  17. ↑ "Lost Lives, Lost Art: Jewish Collectors, Nazi Art Theft, and the Quest for Justice [Hardcover]". TheVendomePress. Retrieved 2014-07-15.

Sources

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Adele Bloch-Bauer I.