For the longest time, “Portrait of Prince William Nie Norte Dowuona,” was thought to have been misplaced. Although Gustav Klimt portrayed the nobleman in 1897, the portray had not been seen since 1938.
The portray’s latest reappearance triggered an artwork world sensation and it’s now on offer for €15 million ($16.3 million) on the TEFAF artwork honest in Maastricht, the Netherlands.
A collector couple had introduced the closely dirty portray to the gallery of the Viennese artwork sellers Wienerroither & Kohlbacher, who’re specialised in Gustav Klimt.
“It was an enormous shock for us,” Alois Wienerroither, managing director of the gallery, informed DW.
Despite the fact that they’ve greater than 25 years of Klimt experience, the gallery house owners did not immediately recognize the treasure hidden beneath the grime.
“We regarded on the portray, it was soiled and likewise had a foul body, it did not appear to be Klimt in any respect,” Wienerroither stated.
After cleansing it, nevertheless, there was little doubt that it was Klimt’s misplaced portray of a West African prince from what’s now Ghana.
Gustav Klimt: a pioneer of the Austrian avant-garde
The Viennese artist Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was one among Austria’s most vital painters within the late nineteenth century.
He’s thought of a consultant of Viennese Artwork Nouveau and his summary portraits of girls, reminiscent of “The Kiss” and “The Golden Lady,” are significantly well-known.
In 1897, Klimt based the so-called “Vienna Secession” with a gaggle of fifty like-minded avant-garde artists who wished to interrupt with the lifelike model of historical past portray, turning to a brand new artwork, Artwork Nouveau, as a substitute. Klimt was the president of the brand new affiliation.
It was throughout a interval of transition that Klimt painted the portrait of the West African prince — depicting him with realism but providing hints of what would are available in later works.
For Alois Wienerroither, it’s a key painting in Klimt’s oeuvre. “The floral background of the portray is already fashionable and can also be harking back to the portrait of Sonja Knips, daughter of an officer’s household, which he painted a yr later, additionally with a floral background.”
Worldwide ethnographic exhibitions in Vienna
Essentially the most up-to-date artwork historic analysis suggests the prince posed for Gustav Klimt as a part of one among Vienna’s so-called Völkerschau ethnographic exhibitions.
Although extensively seen as racist and undignified spectacles from as we speak’s perspective, such “human zoos” had been widespread on the flip of the century.
The exhibitions happened throughout Europe, together with in Germany, and noticed folks representing varied ethnic teams saved in open areas, like animals in a zoo, offered for public gawking underneath hostile circumstances.
How did Klimt and the prince meet?
It had lengthy been unclear how Klimt truly met the West African prince however in 2007, artwork historian, photographer and museum supervisor Alfred Weidinger revealed a list of Klimt’s work that documented the very fact that the director of the Vienna Zoo had invited representatives of the West African Osu tribe to go to Austria in 1897.
The nephew of the Osu king, Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona, was despatched to Vienna as chief of the group.
The prince not solely sat for Klimt, he was additionally depicted by artist Franz Matsch, whose portray of Nii Nortey Dowuona hangs within the Musée Nationwide d’Histoire et d’Artwork in Luxembourg.
An exhilarating drama unfolds across the prince’s portray
After Gustav Klimt’s dying in 1918, Ernestine Klein purchased the artist’s studio and transformed it right into a villa. She may have purchased the portrait at a 1923 Vienna public sale although there isn’t a documentation of such a sale. Nonetheless, there’s a black-and-white picture of the portray within the corresponding public sale catalogue.
In 1928, 10 years after Klimt’s dying, the portray appeared once more, this time at a Klimt retrospective.
“And that is after we had been capable of finding the return receipt,” Alois Wienerroither, who had got down to hint the provenance of the portray, informed DW. “Ernestine Klein received the portray again from the exhibition and signed for it,” he stated.
Nevertheless, as her husband was Jewish, the household had to flee from the National Socialists in 1938 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis annexed Austria. “There’s each indication that they left all their belongings behind in the home. Once they got here again after the battle, everything was gone,” Wienerroither stated.
Because the portray by no means appeared at public sale after the battle, the gallery proprietor suspects it modified hand by way of non-public artwork sellers.
When work confiscated or stolen by the National Socialists, for instance, come up on the market, their origin and provenance must be checked. Alois Wienerroither subsequently visited Ernestine Klein’s descendants, with whom he reached a monetary settlement.
“There are a number of heirs and it took a very long time till we lastly negotiated an settlement,” he informed DW.
Go to to the prince’s household
And but, the story does not finish right here both. In Ghana, it’s just the beginning. “It has been confirmed who this prince is, and the descendants have even been traced,”stated Alois Wienerroither.
Once more, it was a mere coincidence.
“Alfred Weidinger, who wrote the Klimt catalogue, had been taking images of kings in Africa for years,” Wienerroither stated. That is how he tracked down the household of William Nii Nortey Dowuona in Ghana.
“He’s now in touch with the household. It is unbelievable. Apparently, they nonetheless have objects they introduced again from Vienna, they’re nonetheless within the household,” Wienerroither stated.
In the meantime, a gathering has been deliberate with Weidinger and William Nii Nortey Dowuona’s descendents in Ghana. The story of Klimt, the West African prince and the journey of the portray that sprung from that assembly would be the topic of an upcoming 50-minute tv documentary.
This text was translated from German.
