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00:00 Sold for a lower price than expected, Gustav Klimt's portrait of Fraulein Lieser was expected
00:06 to reach up to 50 million euros at auction this Wednesday. In the end it sold to an unnamed
00:12 buyer at 30 million euros.
00:15 Considered lost for decades, the masterpiece by Gustav Klimt was found hidden away in a
00:20 private estate in Austria. The work was never entirely finished by the Austrian painter.
00:26 "He took on this painting in the last year of his life, around May 1917 we assume. He
00:35 died in February 1918 and he did not complete it. In our opinion, however, it is largely
00:40 complete. It is missing, I would say, 5 percent and the signature."
00:50 Last seen in public in 1925 at an exhibition in Vienna, the portrait is of a young Jewish
00:55 girl from the family of a wealthy industrialist. Its last owner, a member of the Lieser family,
01:01 was deported in 1942 and murdered at Auschwitz in 1943. The painting then disappeared until
01:09 its recent discovery. The unfinished canvas has been exhibited in Switzerland, Germany,
01:14 the UK and Hong Kong before being put up for auction.