In a landmark decision, the ownership of an Egon Schiele drawing, “Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, 1917,” has finally been resolved by a judge in Rochester, New York. This decision marks the end of a protracted dispute that has spanned decades, involving competing claims from the heirs of two art collectors who were victims of the Holocaust.
Following the Nazi occupation of Vienna, the portrait was looted. And now, over 80 years later, the work has been the subject of a restitution dispute. For many years, the Schiele drawing had been in the possession of a foundation named after Robert Owen Lehman Jr., who revealed that he received the artwork from his father in the 1960s. Lehman’s father, a financier renowned for steering Lehman Bros. through the Great Depression, acquired the piece during a period marked by significant art market upheavals.
The case brought to the state Supreme Court featured the heirs of Heinrich Rieger and Karl Mayländer, both of whom were prominent art collectors and acquaintances of Schiele. The Rieger heirs, including Schiele’s dentist, and the Mayländer heirs, represented by a foundation pursuing the family’s interests, presented their claims, each asserting that their relatives had owned the drawing before it was lost amidst the chaos and Nazi looting.
On Thursday, Justice Daniel J. Doyle ruled in favour of the Mayländer heirs. In his 86-page decision, Doyle stated, “The evidence presented at trial establishes by a preponderance of the evidence that the Mayländer Heirs have superior title to the drawing.”
The judge’s decision was significantly influenced by a 1960 contract related to the sale of Mayländer’s collection. This document listed a Schiele portrait of his wife, which Doyle determined to be the work in dispute. The drawing, created in 1917, is one of several portraits Schiele made of his wife, Edith, and is estimated to be worth several million dollars.
Egon Schiele, an expressionist who died at 28 during the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, had been a protégé of Gustav Klimt. Although the Nazis condemned Schiele’s work as “decadent,” it gained significant popularity post-World War II and is now held in high esteem by institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Leopold Museum in Vienna.
The legal battle highlighted the complexities of restitution cases involving art looted during World War II. At the trial, lawyers for three families, all with Jewish heritage, presented testimony from multiple witnesses, including art historians and Schiele experts, to untangle the murky provenance of the artwork.
The Lehman Foundation’s lawyers contended that the drawing’s provenance from when Schiele created it until the 1960s needed clarification. They argued that Robert Owen Lehman Sr. had purchased the drawing from a London gallery in 1964 for 2,000 pounds (approximately $5,600) and that there was no evidence suggesting it had been looted.
The prominence of the Lehman family added a layer of complexity to the case. Robert Owen Lehman Jr., known as Robin, is an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and a great-grandson of Emanuel Lehman, one of the founders of Lehman Bros. Lehman testified that he received the drawing as a Christmas gift in 1964 and later donated it to his foundation in 2016. The Robert Owen Lehman Foundation then consigned the drawing for sale to Christie’s, where it remained as the dispute unfolded.
The Rieger heirs argued that the drawing had been taken by Nazi-era gallery owner Friedrich Welz from Heinrich Rieger and brought to the art market. Raymond Dowd, their lawyer, emphasised the family’s long search for the artwork, stating that it had been their life’s mission to recover it.
However, Justice Doyle found that Rieger’s claim was undermined by evidence suggesting that his Schiele portrait was likely a different piece. Instead, Doyle sided with the Mayländer heirs. Their lawyer, Oren J. Warshavsky, argued that the evidence led to the “irresistible inference” that the drawing had belonged to Mayländer.
The Mayländer heirs contended that under Nazi persecution, Karl Mayländer’s collection was transferred to Etelka Hofmann, who later sold a group of the works in 1960, including one described as “Edith Schiele, Seated, Watercolor Drawing, Signed and Dated 1917.” Art historian Professor Tobias Natter’s testimony supported this claim, indicating that only one of Schiele’s portraits of his wife matched the description in the 1960 contract.
Doyle concluded that Mayländer’s transfer of his collection to Hofmann occurred under duress and was not voluntary, given the context of Nazi persecution. The ruling thus favoured the Mayländer heirs, resolving a long-standing dispute and marking a significant moment in the ongoing efforts to restitute art lost during the Holocaust.
Michael Lissner, trustee of the Susan Zirkl Memorial Foundation Trust, which focuses on autism and represents the Mayländer heirs, expressed the personal significance of the decision. “My wife and I are also children of Holocaust survivors,” he said. “This decision means a lot to us, too.” The disposition of the artwork will be determined in consultation with the Austrian Jewish community.
Top Photo: Public domain Wiki Art
