Adele Bloch-Bauer II and its return to the Bloch-Bauer heirs

Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer fled Austria in March 1938. He died in Zurich on 13 November 1945. The collection he left behind in Vienna included Gustav Klimt’s 1912 portrait of his wife Adele, an oil on canvas now known as Adele Bloch-Bauer II. It is a separate work from the 1907 Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, though both were among the five Klimts returned to the family in 2006.

The record of what happened next comes mainly from an arbitration award published in 2006. It says the tax authorities opened proceedings against Ferdinand on 27 April 1938, and that a lawyer, Dr. Führer, was appointed temporary administrator of his estate with orders to sell off the collection. The Neue Galerie in New York, which has shown the family’s Klimts, states that the Nazis stole the paintings from the family that year. According to the award, Dr. Führer sold this portrait in 1943 to the Austrian Gallery, now the Belvedere in Vienna.

After the war came a second turning point. The award records a settlement in 1948 between the Republic of Austria and Dr. Gustav Rinesch, who represented Ferdinand’s heirs. The panel found that Austria acquired ownership of the painting through that settlement. Decades later Maria Altmann, Adele’s niece, brought a case against Austria. The University of Geneva’s case note says the United States Supreme Court held in June 2004 that Austria could be sued in an American court. In May 2005 the parties agreed to take the dispute to arbitration in Austria instead.

On 15 January 2006 a panel of three, sitting in Vienna, decided that the conditions of Austria’s 1998 art restitution law were met for five Klimt paintings, this portrait among them. The law allowed their return to the heirs without payment. Austria bore the costs, and the Belvedere says the works were handed to the family’s legal successors after the decision.

The Belvedere adds that the portrait was auctioned the same year and has been in private hands since. CBS News reported that a Klimt portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer sold at Christie’s on the evening of 8 November 2006 for $87.9 million, including the auction house’s commissions. CBS does not say which of the two portraits that was, so the figure rests on the Belvedere’s statement as well. In 2023 and 2024 the Belvedere showed the painting again, credited to a private collection.