[MSN] Klimt article - interesting Canadian Jewish News Nov 30 2006

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Montreal heir to restituted art fortune staying mum                                                                                                                         
                                                  By                         JANICE ARNOLD                                                                                                                             
                         Staff Reporter                                                                          
                                                                            The Montreal man who is a 25-per-cent heir to the hundreds of millions  of dollars that were paid for five restituted masterpieces that were  stolen from his great uncle Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer by the Nazis is  keeping a very low profile. 
   Francis Gutmann, nephew of  Maria Altmann, 90, of Los Angeles, the lead plaintiff in the long legal  battle to wrest the priceless Gustav Klimt paintings from the Austrian  government, is giving no interviews, the family’s lawyer Randol  Schoenberg of Los Angeles told The CJN. 
   The five  paintings were returned to the heirs at the beginning of this year  after almost eight years before courts in the United States and  Austria. 
   Four of the five Klimts were sold for a total  of $192.7 million (US) at a Christie’s auction in New York earlier this  month, well above their estimated $93- to $140-million value. The first  Klimt, a gold-encrusted portrait of Bloch-Bauer’s wife Adele, was  bought in June in a private sale by cosmetics executive Ronald Lauder  for $135 million for New York’s Neue Galerie on Fifth Avenue, the New  York Times reported. 
    A second 1907 portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer fetched more than $87.9 million at the Nov. 8 Christie’s auction. 
    Gutmann, a physicist who taught science at a Montreal college, was born  in Vienna in 1934. He is not listed in any Quebec telephone directory. 
    His sister, Dr. Nelly Auersperg of Vancouver, a retired professor of  obstetrics and gynecology at the University of British Columbia, is  also a 25-per-cent heir. Their cousin, George Bentley, formerly of  Vancouver, and now of Alamo, Calif., and Trevor Mantle of Vancouver, a  nephew of George’s father’s second wife, each have a 12.5 per cent  stake. 
   (Another Bloch-Bauer heir, Peter Bentley, who was  not party to the lawsuit, is chair of the British Columbia forestry  company Canfor Corp. His father changed the family name to Bentley from  Bloch-Bauer.) 
   After the commission is deducted, Gutmann  and his sister should net between $60 to $70 million each from the five  paintings’ sale. 
   Auersperg has also been reluctant to  speak to the media. “It’s a very, very complicated story,” she told  Canadian Press in July. “There are good sides to it and bad ones. I  just don’t like sharing it with the public. It’s my personal family  business.” 
    Before being sold, the paintings were shown at two major exhibitions in the United States, according to the family’s wishes. 
    “These paintings, their restitution, the subsequent display in L.A. and  New York, along with the extensive media coverage, have informed  millions of people that, in this particular case, justice prevailed,”  Altmann said in a press release issued by Christie’s before this  month’s auction.
   Altmann had offered to sell the Klimt  works to Austria, which considered them national treasures, for fair  market value and allow them to remain in the country, but the  government said it couldn’t afford to do that. 
    Altmann is described as a retired Beverly Hills clothing boutique owner. 
    The other three works sold were Houses in Unterach on Lake Atter, Apple  Tree I, a Birch Forest, and a second portrait of Adele. The buyer or  buyers was not disclosed. 
   Even before the sale of the  five Klimts, the September issue of Art in America magazine, wrote: “In  terms of artistic importance and monetary worth, this was the most  significant of all recent Nazi-looted restitution cases.”
    Klimt, an Austrian, died in 1918. 
    Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, who died impoverished in Switzerland in November  1945, made his fortune in the sugar industry. He was a prominent  Viennese arts patron. 
   Adele died in 1925 at age 43. The  Austrian government maintained that her will indicated that she wanted  the paintings donated to the Austrian State Gallery. The couple had no  children. 
   After the Nazis took over, Ferdinand  Bloch-Bauer fled Austria and his property, including the Klimt  paintings, was confiscated in 1938. The five paintings were eventually  placed in the state gallery in Vienna’s Belvedere castle, where they  remained until this year. 
   According to court documents,  Ferdinand’s will divided his estate among his brother’s three children  – Louise Gutmann (50 per cent), Gutmann and Auersperg’s late mother;  Altmann (25 per cent), and Robert Bentley, George’s late father. 
    Robert died in 1987 and Louise in 1998, both in Vancouver.  
    Gutmann’s mother became a baroness after marrying his father, Baron  Viktor Gutmann. In 1938 she fled Vienna for Yugoslavia just before  Austria’s annexation by Germany. Viktor was killed by Yugoslav  Communists in 1946. 
   His mother subsequently remarried,  changing her name to Gattin, and left for Israel in 1949. The family  immigrated to Canada the following year. 
   In 2000, after  many years of unsuccessful discussions with Austria, the heirs went to  court in the United States, after beginning legal proceedings in  Austria two years earlier. In 1998, Austria passed a law requiring  state museums to check their holdings for Nazi loot. 
   The  family ultimately brought its case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which  ruled in 2004 that the heirs could sue the Austrian government. Austria  argued that Adele’s will indicated she wanted the paintings to be given  to the state gallery. 
   The parties finally submitted the  case to binding arbitration in Austria, and in January, an arbitration  panel unanimously determined that the paintings should be returned to  the heirs. 
   The last time Gutmann was heard from publicly  was six years ago, when he sold two drawings by Klimt of his first  portrait of Adele, valued at $20,000 (US) each, to the National Gallery  of Canada. He sold a third drawing to Queen’s University in Kingston,  Ont.
   The studies were among eight Klimt pieces Austria  returned to the Bloch-Bauer descendants in 2000. They were also  confiscated in 1938 after Austria became part of the Third Reich, and  had been housed in the Albertina, a gallery in Vienna. 
    “I feel very strongly that these things should be seen. I don’t think  that they should stay in my living room,” Gutmann told the Globe and  Mail in January 2001. 
   Some of the pieces were exhibited  at the National Gallery in June of that year. “I felt that Canada has  been very good to me. I’d like the drawings to stay here.”