Gustav Klimt's portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer is mesmerizing in its beauty. It has a very important historical provenance. The Neue Gallery is a small collection concentrated on a single period in Austrian art. This painting is the masterwork of the collection, which was assembled by Ronald Lauder, son of cosmetics queen Estée Lauder.
GUSTAV KLIMT (1862–1918)
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I , 1907
Oil, gold, and silver on canvas
Neue Galerie New York
Acquired through the generosity of Ronald S. Lauder, the heirs of the Estates of Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer, and the Estée Lauder Fund
Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer I (1907) is considered a masterpiece of Klimt's so-called "Golden Style." Few paintings have captured the public's imagination as thoroughly as the Woman in Gold. Klimt's painting of the Jewish socialite not only rendered Adele's irresistible beauty and sensuality; its intricate ornamentation and exotic motifs heralded the dawn of modernity and a culture intent on radically forging a new identity.
In 1938, when the Nazis entered Austria, they seized five Klimt paintings from the Bloch-Bauer family. Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer fled to Switzerland. He wrote a will bequeathing his assets to two nephews and a niece, Maria Altman. She escaped to California, where she fought unsuccessfully for decades to recover the Klimt paintings.
In 1998, a copy of her uncle's will became public, making clear that he wanted his Klimt paintings bestowed on his heirs, not the Belvedere Museum. Maria Altman sued in Austria for restitution and lost. She then sued for the paintings' return in American courts, where she and the Austrian government agreed to binding arbitration. In 2005, the arbitrators decided that the Klimt paintings belonged to the heirs of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. The "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer" was purchased by Ronald Lauder and installed in the Neue Gallery.
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