An Egon Schiele watercolor is set to be sold next month at Christie’s after a settlement was reached between its cosigner and the heirs of its original owner, a Viennese cabaret performer and writer who was killed in a Nazi concentration camp.
The work, Boy in a Sailor Suit (1914), will appear in London on March 5 with a low estimate of $1.3 million as part of Christie’s 20th and 21st centuries auctions. It is one of roughly 80 artworks by Schiele once belonging to Fritz Grünbaum, an Austrian Expressionist artist who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938 for his criticism of the Nazi party.
The son of an art dealer, Grünbaum amassed a collection of over 400 works that ranged from the likes of Rembrandt van Rijn and Albrecht Dürer to Auguste Rodin and Käthe Kollwitz. All these works were seized by the Nazis during their annexation of Austria in 1938, according to Grünbaum’s heirs. Grünbaum was murdered in Dachau in 1941. His wife Elisabeth was killed at the Maly Trostenets concentration camp a year later.
Timothy Reif and another trustee of the Grünbaum estate, David Fraenkel, have pursued the looted collection for years with support from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. The pair filed suits against a slew of American museums—New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others—for Schiele works they say once belonged to Grünbaum, and of now have reclaimed or reached settlements for 12 works on paper by the Austrian Expressionist.
“We are grateful that Fritz Grünbaum’s ownership of [Boy in a Sailor Suit] superb work of art has been restored to history and that proceeds from this auction will help the Grünbaum Fischer Foundation support underrepresented performing artists,” Reif said in a statement to press.
The Art Institute of Chicago, however, is disputing its claim to the Schiele in its collection, called Russian War Prisoner, and has prepared evidence that it was not looted by the Nazis but rather sold by Grünbaum’s sister-in-law, Mathilde Lukacs, to an art dealer in 1956. A New York Supreme Court judge who presided over several hearings on the matter is expected to issue a ruling this fall.
The claimants have landed in court several times in recent years to settle the provenance of the Grünbaum collection, to varying success. The Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Ohio’s Oberlin College have both returned works following ownership challenges.
In 2018, New York Supreme Court determined that Grünbaum did not voluntarily relinquish any artworks prior to his death, forcing the art dealer Richard Nagy to surrender two Schiele drawings in his collection. The ruling was upheld by a New York appeals court the following year, creating a legal precedent for Manhattan investigators to seize alleged Grünbaum artworks from US museums, as in the case against the Museum of Modern Art. The heirs have had less success elsewhere. In two civil cases, one in connection to the Art Institute’s Russian War Prisoner, federal courts determined that the pair were too late with their claims and that there was sufficient evidence that Lukacs had legitimately sold the Schiele.
Meanwhile, two Vienna museums—the Albertina and the Leopold Museum—facing a fight from the heirs, who argue that Austria’s sovereign immunity shields them from US court proceedings. For its part, Christie’s has accepted the provenance provided by the heirs.
“It’s been a privilege for Christie’s Restitution team to help tell the powerful story of Fritz Grünbaum and his collection,” Marc Porter, Chairman of Christie’s Americas, said in a statement, adding that the sale will raise funds “for the Grünbaum Fischer Foundation’s efforts to uplift performing artists,” as well as for a children’s charity project.
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