France’s Culture minister Roselyne Bachelot announced that the French government will take steps to return a painting by Gustav Klimt to the heirs of its owner. Eight decades ago its rightful owner was forced to sell it under Nazi rule.
Nora Stiasny, a member of a prominent Austrian Jewish family, was forced to sell Klimt’s Rosebushes Under the Trees (1905) to artist Philipp Häusler for just 400 Marks, far below its assessed value of 5,000 Marks, to survive after the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938. The painting was an abstracted landscape featuring an apple tree, following the Nazi regime’s annexation of Austria in 1938. A decade prior, Stiasny inherited the painting from her aunt and uncle, the Austrian industrialists and art collectors Viktor and Paula Zuckerkandl, who purchased the work in 1911 and were supporters of Klimt and Josef Hoffmann. Upon Viktor Zuckerkandl’s death in 1927, seven paintings by Klimt, including six landscapes and one portrait of his wife (which was destroyed in 1942), were left in his estate.
The French state bought the work at Zurich’s Peter Nathan Gallery in 1980, not knowing that it had been stolen. Its provenance came to light only recently, said Bachelot, adding that it was the only Klimt in French state museums. Under French law, the restitution of the Klimt painting cannot go in to affect immediately. In order to implement the return of the work to the heirs of Nora Stiasny, the French government is required to submit a bill that would authorize the release of the work from the national collection, on the basis that a theft in 1938 from its original owner took place. The announcement follows the initial request made in September 2019, by attorney Alfred Noll, who is representing the heirs of Nora Stiasny’s for the painting’s return to the family estate.
The work was first exhibited in 1908 at the Kunstschau in Vienna and later at the International Exhibition in Venice in 2011. Before its sale to Häusler, it was showcased in 1928 at the Neue Galerie in Vienna, in an exhibition commemorating the 10th anniversary of Klimt’s death.