Lost 'Black Klimt' Portrait Resurfaces in Vienna — Klimt Masterpiece Sparks Austria–Hungary Tug-of-War

One summer day in 2023 a man walked into a Viennese gallery seeking to sell what he said was a Gustav Klimt painting. The receptionist initially thought it was a joke — until the gallery owner pursued the visitor down the street.

Ebi Kohlbacher, a Klimt specialist, recognised the subject from lost inventories: a portrait of Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona, an African aristocrat who had met Klimt and sat for him. The canvas had been missing for roughly eight decades.

Authentication and artistic significance

Experts, including Alfred Weidinger, authenticated the portrait and traced key elements of Klimt's evolving style in the work. The oil's floral motifs foreshadow the decorative language that later became a Klimt hallmark, while the contrast between the meticulously rendered figure and the expressive background marks a pivotal phase in the artist's development.

'It is one of the rare paintings of a Black person in European art created by a great artist,' Kohlbacher told AFP, adding that the portrait appears to radiate Klimt's admiration for the sitter.

Provenance: loss, displacement and resurgence

The painting originally belonged to the Kleins, a wealthy Jewish Austrian family who acquired it after Klimt's death in 1918. After Austria's 1938 annexation by Nazi Germany, the Kleins fled and entrusted the portrait to a woman who later moved to Hungary. Following the 1949 communist takeover in Budapest, the family says the woman ignored repeated requests to return the work, and the canvas fell out of public view.

Records indicate the painting had four known owners in Hungary between 1988 and 2023. Hungarian authorities granted an export licence in 2023, allowing the portrait to be taken to Austria for expert analysis.

Historical context: the 1897 Vienna exhibition

Prince Dowuona led a delegation of roughly 120 Ga people from near Accra who featured in a controversial 1897 Vienna exhibition that staged African village life in what contemporaries called a 'human zoo.' The show drew thousands daily and has since been seen as both voyeuristic and emblematic of colonial-era attitudes. Scholars say the portrait nevertheless signalled a shift in how some Europeans encountered and perceived African subjects in public life.

Ownership dispute and political flashpoint

The renewed attention has triggered a diplomatic and legal dispute. The most recent owner says he may sell the work under an arrangement consistent with the 1998 Washington Principles on returning assets taken from Holocaust victims and has a confidential agreement with descendants of Ernestine Klein, the original owner who died in 1973.

Budapest, however, contests the export licence and has issued a seizure order, asserting that an object of such cultural and monetary value should never have left Hungary. Vienna's public prosecutor confirmed receipt of the seizure request. The case sits at the intersection of art history, restitution law and contemporary politics.

Broader implications

Beyond its market value — Klimt's 'Lady with a Fan' sold for $108 million in 2023 — the portrait raises questions about provenance, historical memory and how nations resolve claims arising from wartime dispossession and later political upheaval. As experts continue research and legal channels play out, the canvas has become both an art-historical discovery and a diplomatic flashpoint.