A long-lost Klimt painting of an African prince goes on show
An early painting by the famed Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, thought lost since the 1930s, is on view for the first time since its recent rediscovery.
The portrait of Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona — a representative of the Ga people in West Africa, in what is Ghana today — was painted in 1897 and depicts the prince in profile against loose brushstrokes of florals. Just over 2 feet tall, the small portrait is on display by the Viennese gallery Wienerroither & Kohlbacher (W&K) at the art fair TEFAF Maastricht in the Netherlands, with a price tag of €15 million (about $16.3 million).
The framed painting was “heavily soiled” with a “barely visible” estate stamp by Klimt when two collectors contacted W&K gallery with the artwork in 2023, according to a press release by the gallery. The gallery confirmed its authenticity with art historian Alfred Weidinger, who had been searching for the work for two decades.
An early painting by the famed Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, thought lost since the 1930s, is on view for the first time since its recent rediscovery. The portrait of Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona — a representative of the Ga people in West Africa, in what is Ghana today — was painted in 1897 and depicts the prince in profile against loose brushstrokes of florals. Just over 2 feet tall, the small portrait is on display by the Viennese gallery Wienerroither & Kohlbacher (W&K) at the art fair TEFAF Maastricht in the Netherlands, with a price tag of €15 million (about $16.3 million).
The framed painting was “heavily soiled” with a “barely visible” estate stamp by Klimt when two collectors contacted W&K gallery with the artwork in 2023, according to a press release by the gallery. The gallery confirmed its authenticity with art historian Alfred Weidinger, who had been searching for the work for two decades.
The 1897 portrait represents Klimt’s stylistic shift “towards decorative elements,” Weidinger said in the press release, which are the hallmarks of his later style. The Austrian painter is most recognized for the gilded couple he painted about 11 years later in “The Kiss,” which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year to Vienna’s Belvedere Museum. But his “last masterpiece” — a portrait of an unidentified woman with a fan — broke records in 2023 when it sold for £85.3 million ($108.4 million) in London from the collection of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen. It not only surpassed the artist’s personal auction record, but became the most expensive artwork ever sold at a European auction.
Last year, another long-lost and recovered Klimt painting, “Portrait of Fräulein Lieser,” thought to be one of his final works, sold for €30 million ($32 million).
