Schiele's Herbstsonne, returned to Karl Grünwald's heirs

In June 1942, in Strasbourg, the Nazi authorities confiscated a stored collection of about 50 paintings. Christie’s provenance gives the date. The collection belonged to Karl Grünwald, a Vienna collector and dealer in art, textiles and antiques. He had left Vienna in 1938, after Germany annexed Austria, and settled in France. One of the paintings was Egon Schiele’s Herbstsonne, an oil on canvas of 100 by 120.5 centimetres, painted in March 1914. After the seizure it disappeared from view.

Schiele showed the painting in Munich and Brussels in 1914. Christie’s says Grünwald bought it in the 1920s, and that he knew the artist from army service in 1917. It was shown in Paris and Berne in 1937. Grünwald survived the war. His wife Steffany and his daughter Lena did not. They died in a concentration camp, and Le Figaro reports that it was Auschwitz. Grünwald searched for his paintings until he died in November 1964. His son Frederic took up the search. Frederic recovered Schiele’s portrait of his father, and in 1999 won a court order for a Klimt painting held by a Strasbourg museum. He died in September 2004.

The Herbstsonne came back to light at the end of 2005. Its owner, a man with no knowledge of art who had bought it some years before, asked Christie’s for a routine valuation. The Guardian and the Independent report that the Christie’s experts Andreas Rumbler and Thomas Seydoux first saw only a photograph and took it for a copy. They then visited a small, modest flat in France and found the original. An inscription on the stretcher, “Herbstsonne Wien 1914”, fixed the title.

L’Alsace, a regional newspaper, places the flat in Mulhouse and reports the owner’s account: he bought the flat, and the painting came with it. Daniel Fichter, a retired teacher, disputes that account. L’Alsace reports that he says the painting hung in his parents’ Mulhouse flat when he was a child. The published sources do not show how the work passed from 1942 to the owner.

Christie’s advised the owner of the moral considerations. He decided to return the painting to the heirs of Karl Grünwald. Die Welt notes that, as a private person, he had no legal duty to do so. Christie’s English releases date the restitution to February 2006. Its German release says January. The owner asked to stay anonymous. No source reports a charge against him or any claim of wrongdoing by him. The return was announced on 21 April 2006, with the family present.

The family chose to sell. Karl’s granddaughter, Cory Pollack, told the Independent that the proceeds would be shared among relatives in the United States and France. Die Welt counts seven heirs. Christie’s offered the painting at its London Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on 20 June 2006, as lot 7, with an estimate of 4 to 6 million pounds. It sold for 11,768,000 pounds, as Christie’s reported the price. ARTnews names the buyer as the New York dealers Eykyn Maclean. The Kallir Research Institute’s catalogue lists the painting as in a private collection, courtesy of Eykyn Maclean, as of 2024.