American Patricia Lihy has filed a lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court, demanding the restitution of Gustav Klimt's painting "Portrait of Fräulein Lieser" (Portrait of Fräulein Lieser, 1917).
The painting was sold in 2024 at a small Vienna auction house, Im Kinsky, for $37.5 million, setting an absolute record for all Austrian auctions. However, soon after, the buyer, a Hong Kong collector, retracted his bid, and the painting remained with the auction house. The commission for the portrait was made by Jewish industrialist Adolf Lizer, the father of the depicted Margarete. Later, the family faced Nazi persecution and lost almost all their property. After being showcased at the Vienna retrospective of Klimt in 1925, the painting disappeared from sight for a whole century—until its sale at Im Kinsky.
Patricia Lihy is the granddaughter of Adolf Lizer and the niece of Margarete, and she claims to be the sole heir to the painting. Lizer had two children—Margarete and Hans. Margarete's son, William de Helse, died childless in 2021. Hans raised a son, Nikola, from his first marriage (who grew up under the surname Kraft and is also considered an heir under Austrian law), but later remarried and moved to the USA, where Patricia was born.
Lihy claims that she tried to contest the sale before the auction, but she was threatened with a lawsuit on behalf of other heirs. According to the plaintiff, the auction house exhibited the work, naming not Margarete as the model but one of her cousins. Lihy's lawyers point out that the sale price was significantly undervalued and that the work was intentionally sent to Austria rather than to Christie’s or Sotheby’s: Austrian restitution laws regarding Nazi trophies are less strict than in other countries. For comparison, Klimt's "Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer" (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, 1914–1916) was sold at Sotheby’s auction in November 2025 for $236.4 million.
