Portrait of Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsőványi)

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About Portrait of Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsőványi)

Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsőványi) creates presence through near-disappearance. A nineteen-year-old woman stands frontally inside a canvas so narrow that her body occupies almost its entire height and width. Dress and background meet in pale lilac and blue transitions. Dark hair, the face, four descending ribbon bands and a pair of green signature squares supply the firmer accents. Instead of surrounding the sitter with gold, furniture or dense pattern, Klimt allows colour and fabric to approach atmosphere.

The painting has also carried its sitter through several public identities. She was born Gertrud Loew and known as Gertha. Marriage brought the names Eisler von Terramare and later Felsőványi. A 1912 exhibition called her Frau G. Baruch-Loew; early displays used the generic Portrait of a Young Girl. Sotheby's 2026 title preserves both the birth name and the familiar later one: Bildnis Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsőványi) (Portrait of Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsőványi)).^[1][2][3]

Its ownership history is less transparent. Gertha left Austria under Nazi persecution in 1939 and could not recover her art collection. Film director Gustav Ucicky possessed the portrait by 1942, but the transaction that brought it to him cannot now be reconstructed. An independent review led to a voluntary 2014 Washington Principles settlement between the private Klimt Foundation and Gertha's heirs. The canvas then sold in 2015 and again on 24 June 2026. Recent price and present private ownership do not resolve the historical break in the chain.

At a Glance

• ArtistGustav Klimt
• Current Sotheby's titleThe full bilingual title given in the opening, preserving Gertrud Loew and the later Gertha Felsőványi
• Date1902
• MediumOil on canvas
• Dimensions149.5 × 44.2 centimetres
• Signature and dateGustav Klimt and 1902, upper left
• SitterGertrud Loew, known as Gertha; later Gertha Baruch von Felsőványi
• Sitter's ageNineteen
• CommissionerDr Anton Loew, the sitter's father
• Possible occasionEngagement or forthcoming marriage, but not securely documented as the purpose
• Preparatory evidenceNo preparatory studies are currently known
• First exhibitionKlimt collective exhibition, Vienna Secession, 1903–04, no. 40, as Bildnis eines jungen Mädchens
• Nazi-era transferAcquired by Gustav Ucicky during the Nazi period, in circumstances that cannot now be reconstructed
• 2014 outcomeVoluntary just-and-fair settlement between the private Klimt Foundation and Gertha Felsőványi's heirs under the Washington Principles
• 2015 auctionSotheby's London, 24 June 2015, £24.8 million; acquired by the Lewis Collection
• 2026 auctionSotheby's London, 24 June 2026, £36,160,000 including premium
• Access position on 9 August 2026No public viewing announced; ownership remained private, while the purchaser and whereabouts were undisclosed^{[1][4][6][7][8]}

Gertrud, Gertha and Felsőványi

The sitter was born Gertrud Franziska Sophie Loew in Vienna in 1883 and was commonly known as Gertha. Klimt painted her as Gertrud Loew, before either marriage. In February 1903 she married Hans Eisler von Terramare. That marriage ended, and in April 1912 she married the Hungarian entrepreneur Elemér Baruch Felsöványi de Felsö-Ványi. She subsequently appears in records as Gertha Baruch von Felsőványi and related spelling variants.^[2][3][5]

The double acute in Felsőványi is preserved in Sotheby's June 2026 title. Klimt Database and older documents sometimes use Felsövanyi, Felsöványi or the divided form Felsö-Ványi. These differences reflect language, typography and historical cataloguing; they do not identify separate women or families.

The names also date the records in which they appear. Gertrud Loew belongs naturally to the 1902 commission. Frau G. Baruch-Loew, used at a Vienna portrait exhibition in 1912, connects birth and later family names. Gertha Felsőványi makes the sitter recognisable through the persecution and provenance history. The long current title refuses to choose one life stage at the expense of the others.^[1]

The Exact 1902 Object

Sotheby's 2026 record identifies a canvas signed and dated 1902 at the upper left, painted in oil and measuring 149.5 by 44.2 centimetres. The 2015 auction catalogue rounded the width to 45 centimetres. The updated measurement is the best current baseline; the older figure is a catalogue convention around the same object, not evidence of trimming or a second version.^[1]

No current object record identifies gold leaf, silver, applied textile or mixed media. The gauzy, silk-like or crinkled appearance of the dress is an oil-painted illusion. Lilac ribbons are depicted, not attached. Nothing in the retained technical record establishes an unfinished state or a separately completed first state.

The signature and date are part of the painted surface. Klimt placed them within two green squares at upper left. Klimt Database compares this arrangement to the stamp-like signatures on Japanese woodcuts, but the squares are not actual seals, printed devices, Asian inscriptions or metal plaques.^[2]

A Commission from Anton Loew

Dr Anton Loew, Gertrud's father, commissioned the portrait from Klimt in 1902. Loew was a physician and the founder of Sanatorium Loew, a prominent private hospital in Vienna. He supported the Vienna Secession and collected modern artists as well as older art. The commission therefore arose within an established culture of patronage, not from an incidental studio encounter.^[1][2][3][5]

Klimt Database proposes that the painting may have been an engagement present, since Gertrud married Hans Eisler von Terramare in February 1903. The timing makes the suggestion plausible, but no retained contract fixes engagement, birthday or wedding as the exact purpose. “Commissioned by her father in 1902” is secure; “painted as an engagement gift” remains a qualified possibility.^[2]

Gertrud's age matters without becoming an interpretation of her expression. She was nineteen. The portrait marks a transition into adult society, yet its generic first-exhibition title and pale visual field should not be used to make her childlike, passive or psychologically fragile.

The precise occasion remains even less settled than the commission itself. One Klimt Database account connects the portrait with the marriage that followed in February 1903; its Loew-family history also allows that it may have been intended as a birthday gift for Anton or as a present for the couple. These are evidence-based possibilities, not three events that can be combined into a single confident story. The canvas establishes what Anton ordered and when. It does not preserve the words with which the finished work was given.^[2][3]

Before the Secession: A Portrait Seen at Home

Gertrud's likeness had a private life before the public exhibition that made Hevesi's response part of its record. The Klimt Database reports Hermann Bahr seeing the new painting during a 1903 visit to the Loew family. His diary concentrated on the white and violet figure's floating delicacy. He was responding inside a patron's home rather than writing an official object description, and his emotional reaction belongs to early reception rather than to the sitter's psychology.^[3]

That domestic encounter helps correct a common distortion produced by auction and exhibition histories. The painting was not originally an unattached modern masterpiece waiting for a museum wall. It entered a household that collected contemporary art, supported the Secession and understood a commissioned portrait as both family likeness and modern cultural statement. Its extremely narrow proportions must therefore have worked at human scale in an interior, where a standing viewer could register the nearly life-height body before noticing how little physical width the canvas occupies.

The Loew-family account places the portrait in the entrance hall of the family's Pelikangasse apartment. This location does not prove that Klimt designed the room, that the picture formed part of a fixed decorative programme or that every later family residence displayed it identically. It does establish that the canvas remained an encountered family object, not merely an exhibition loan kept out of view.^[3]

After Gertrud's first marriage, she and Hans Eisler von Terramare lived in a Schottenring apartment furnished by Kolo Moser and executed through the Wiener Werkstätte. Six Klimt drawings received frames coordinated with that interior. Those sheets and furnishings demonstrate the couple's participation in modern Viennese design, but the current evidence does not identify this portrait as one of the apartment's specially integrated components. The distinction matters: association with a Gesamtkunstwerk should not be expanded into an undocumented installation claim.^[2][3]

Private placement also changes the function of the generic exhibition title. At home the sitter's identity required no catalogue label. When Anton requested anonymity for his loans, the Secession could present Portrait of a Young Girl while family and visitors still knew exactly whose likeness they saw. Public vagueness and private recognition existed at the same time.

An Exceptionally Narrow Portrait

At 149.5 centimetres high and only 44.2 centimetres wide, the canvas is more than three times as tall as it is wide. Gertrud's figure nearly fills this compressed vertical field. There is little room for furniture, architectural setting or the lateral gestures of a conventional full-length society portrait.^[1][2]

The height gives the image bodily presence, while the unusually small width makes that presence seem concentrated rather than expansive.

The restriction makes small variations consequential. A ribbon's descent becomes an important vertical event. The dark head anchors the upper part. Slight changes between the body, fabric and surrounding pale colour determine where the figure begins and ends. Format is not merely the container of the portrait; it actively produces its delicacy and tension.

Klimt Database associates the unusual proportion with Japanese art. That is a formal comparison, not identification of a woodcut copied directly. The stamp-like signature squares strengthen the relation, while the frontal sitter and light field remain Klimt's own recombination within a Viennese commission.^[2]

Earlier pale portraits, especially Serena Lederer and the lost Trude Steiner, provide another context for the type. Gertrud's canvas is narrower and more tightly cropped, pushing the fusion of clothing and environment further. The comparison explains development without turning one woman into a rehearsal for another.^[2]

Pale Colour as Structure

The palette is dominated by light blues and lilacs. Dress and background do not oppose one another through a hard silhouette; they continue across low-contrast transitions. The sitter is unmistakably present, but her outline has to be assembled from tonal differences rather than a dark boundary.^[2]

This is not an absence of design. The face and hair establish one concentration. Ribbons organise the long torso. Folds and crinkles create small shadows that activate the otherwise pale dress. The green signature squares provide a separate upper-left counterweight. Klimt achieves order through slight degrees of difference.

The effect is often described as ethereal, powdery or atmospheric. Such words name a visual experience, not Gertrud's personality. Pale colour cannot prove innocence, nervousness, weakness or spiritual detachment. It records Klimt's experiment in allowing a body to remain legible while its dress approaches the surrounding field.

This tonal strategy also distinguishes the portrait from Klimt's more familiar material splendour. There is no need to import gold to explain its value. Restraint, compression and minute chromatic adjustment carry the image.

The portrait belongs to a moment when Klimt was increasingly flattening the relation between figure and setting without abandoning the observed face. Klimt Database places this development alongside his engagement with recent French and Belgian painting, especially the use of lilac and light blue to loosen solid furniture and enclosed space into colour. Gertrud's painting takes that problem to an extreme: there is scarcely an interior to dissolve, because dress and field already occupy almost the same tonal register.^[2]

Flatness here does not mean that every element is equally abstract. The head retains greater concentration and descriptive force than the long costume. The signature squares announce the literal plane at upper left, while the ribbons lead the eye down a body that is simultaneously represented and converted into design. The canvas can therefore sustain likeness and surface order without forcing the reader to choose one as the painting's true subject.

This is also why a simple story of progression toward gold is inadequate. The picture's historical position is not valuable only because later portraits became more ornamented. Klimt found a distinct solution in 1902—atmosphere held inside a severe format—and the result remains intelligible on its own terms.

Dress, Veiling and Four Lilac Ribbons

The dress appears light, crinkled and almost translucent. Veil-like fabric around the upper figure softens the transition from shoulders to background. Four pale lilac ribbon stripes descend with different curves, making the narrow body feel both upright and mobile.^[2]

The material is not securely identified through a surviving garment. “Silk,” “gauze,” “gossamer” and related descriptions capture painted appearance or historical reception. No evidence assigns the dress to Schwestern Flöge, the Wiener Werkstätte or another named designer, and none should be supplied by analogy with other Klimt portraits.

The ribbons are especially important because they vary inside an otherwise restricted palette. They do not fall as four mechanically parallel lines. Each responds differently to the crinkled surface. This breaks the long body into a sequence of gentle deviations while preserving vertical direction.

Fabric therefore performs the work that furniture or setting might do elsewhere. It gives scale, movement and rhythm. The sitter's identity is held by the face and name, but the composition is held by the fall of her clothing.

Hevesi Looks at the Painting

Ludwig Hevesi discussed the portrait when it appeared at Klimt's collective exhibition. He contrasted Gertrud's pale youthfulness with the sharper, darker impression of Klimt's earlier Rose von Rosthorn-Friedmann. He focused on the very light young sitter, the crinkled dress and the four lilac silk-ribbon bands.^[2]

What impressed the critic was the balance between apparent accident and painterly decision. The bands seemed to wander differently with the falling fabric, yet their variation formed a deliberate pictorial order. This observation remains useful because it directs attention to how the portrait is made rather than merely praising the sitter's beauty.

Hevesi's language is still reception, not neutral fact. His contrast between a dark earlier woman and a pale young one reflects his own expectations about age, temperament and modern femininity. It should not be converted into a diagnosis of either sitter.

The review does, however, establish that contemporary viewers noticed precisely the features that remain distinctive: youth, whiteness, crinkled surface, lilac accent and controlled irregularity. The painting's quietness was legible as a technical achievement from its first public appearance.

No Preparatory Studies Are Currently Known

Klimt Database states that no preliminary studies appear to survive for this portrait. The proper conclusion is that no preparatory drawings are currently known in the scholarly record. It does not prove that Klimt made none, worked without drawing, or destroyed a specific group.^[2]

Absence matters because Klimt's portraits are often accompanied by extensive sheet families. Here the painted object, exhibition records and later reproductions carry more of the evidence for composition. An unrelated standing-woman drawing cannot be drafted into service merely because its date or pose looks compatible.

The five Klimt drawings involved in the 2014 settlement are a separate matter. Their provenance was unresolved, but the Foundation does not identify them as preparations for Gertrud's portrait. Settlement history must not be mistaken for study evidence.^[4]

A Generic First Exhibition Title

The painting first appeared in the 1903–04 Klimt collective exhibition at the Vienna Secession, catalogue number 40, under Bildnis eines jungen Mädchens—Portrait of a Young Girl. Anton Loew lent it and asked that his loans be described anonymously as coming from a private collection.^[1][2][3]

The generic title therefore reflects exhibition practice and a lender's request. It does not mean that Klimt did not know the sitter or that modern scholars guessed her identity. Father, commission and sitter were secure within the private context even when the catalogue withheld the name.

The title history later followed Gertrud's life. Dresden in 1904 retained Portrait of a Young Girl. Berlin showed the work in 1905. Vienna in 1912 used Frau G. Baruch-Loew. A likely, but not fully certain, Zurich appearance in 1918 used another married-form label. The changing words refer to one signed canvas.^[1]

Later exhibitions returned it to public view, including Venice in 1958 and Vienna in 1964. More recently it appeared at the MAK in 2014–15, at the Neue Galerie and other venues, and on an extended Neue Galerie loan from 2017 to 2019. These displays did not make the museums owners.^[1][4]

A Life beyond the Nineteen-Year-Old Sitter

After Anton Loew died in 1907, Gertrud became the sanatorium's principal shareholder and returned to the family residence. Contemporary family accounts say she took an active role in running the institution. That work gives the sitter a history beyond the pale young woman described by critics.^[3][5]

Her first marriage ended formally in 1910. In 1912 she married Elemér Baruch Felsöványi, with whom she had three children. He died in 1923. These events explain the names attached to later exhibitions and ownership records; they should not be read backwards as meanings hidden in the 1902 ribbons.^[3][5]

The sanatorium itself was an important Viennese institution, but its full medical and social history lies beyond this portrait. What matters here is Gertrud's movement from a physician's daughter to a person involved in managing the family enterprise and its property.

Persecution, Exile and a Lost Collection

After the Anschluss in 1938, Sanatorium Loew was forced to close and liquidate. Gertrud was persecuted as Jewish despite her Roman Catholic faith. Under increasing pressure, she left Vienna in 1939, entrusting possessions and art to a friend and leaving the collection in Austria.^[3][5]

Her route was precarious. A 2015 family and Foundation account records that she was denied entry when she reached New York, received only a brief pass through Eleanor Roosevelt's intervention, continued to Colombia and taught French while waiting. In June 1940 she obtained entry to the United States and began again, including night work.^[5]

Her daughter Maria later returned to Vienna to seek the family's property and discovered that the collection had been dispersed. Gertrud never returned to Austria. She died in California in March 1964.^[3][5]

This biography should not be used to turn the earlier portrait into a prophecy of persecution. Its relevance lies in ownership and agency: the woman whose name now anchors the title survived displacement but did not regain the painting.

The Unresolved Transfer to Gustav Ucicky

Sotheby's current provenance places the portrait with Anton Loew, then with his widow Sophie by inheritance in 1907, and with Gertha Baruch von Felsőványi by 1918. It next records filmmaker Gustav Ucicky as acquiring it around 1941.^[1]

The crucial transaction is not documented. Independent researchers could not reconstruct seller, price, intermediary, exact date or degree of coercion. Their 2014 report concluded that it should be presumed Ucicky purchased the work in Austria during Nazi rule. A separate legal statement established that it had not been returned to Gertrud or her heirs after the war and that Ucicky owned it by 1942 at the latest.^[4][6]

Those findings support neither an invented confiscation order nor a presumption of an ordinary voluntary sale. “Acquired circa 1941” is a provenance shorthand; it does not fill the circumstances that persecution erased.

Ucicky retained the painting until his death in 1961. His widow Ursula inherited it and gave it to the Klimt Foundation in 2013. Ownership passed, but the historical problem did not disappear.^[1][4]

The 2014 Washington Principles Settlement

The Klimt Foundation and the Felsőványi family commissioned provenance research and submitted a joint dossier to an independent panel of legal experts in 2014. The panel found that, if Austria's Federal Art Restitution Law applied, the painting would have to be returned.^[4]

The legal condition matters. The Foundation was a private institution, not a federal museum governed in the same way by that statute. It nevertheless pursued a voluntary, just-and-fair agreement with the heirs under the Washington Principles on Nazi-confiscated art.^[4][6]

This was not a simple transfer of the canvas to the family followed by an unrelated sale. Sotheby's provenance records joint settlement ownership between the Foundation and the heirs. The public sources do not disclose all financial terms. Both parties supported exhibition at the MAK before export permission was granted in May 2015 and the work went to auction outside Austria.^[1][4]

The agreement recognised the painting's unresolved Nazi-era history without pretending that the missing transaction had suddenly been reconstructed. A just-and-fair solution addresses the consequences of a gap; it does not turn uncertainty into documentary completeness.

Five Drawings, Separate from the Painting

The 2014 arrangement also assigned five Klimt drawings to the Felsőványi family because provenance research on them had not reached a definitive result. These were separate works on paper with their own ownership questions.^[4]

They do not contradict the statement that no preparatory studies for the portrait are currently known. A drawing once belonging to the family, or included in the same settlement, is not automatically a study for this canvas. Only an object-specific scholarly association could establish that role.

This distinction prevents two different records from being fused: absence of known preparatory sheets for the 1902 composition, and the return of five independently contested drawings in 2014.

The 2015 Sale and Lewis Collection

Sotheby's sold the painting in London on 24 June 2015 for £24.8 million. The successful acquisition later became identified with the Lewis Collection. The canvas subsequently travelled to exhibitions and was placed on extended loan to the Neue Galerie from 2017 to 2019.^[1][7]

A museum loan did not make the Neue Galerie owner, and a sale following settlement did not erase the provenance account that enabled it. The 2015 event joined a new private-collection phase to a history publicly disclosed through research.

The price should also remain distinct from the earlier estimate and from the 2026 result. It is a dated transaction, not a timeless valuation or an index of how important Gertrud's portrait is relative to other works.

The 24 June 2026 Resale

Exactly eleven years after the 2015 auction, Sotheby's offered the portrait again in London on 24 June 2026. The estimate was £20–30 million. The recorded sale price was £36,160,000 including premium; Klimt Database rounds that to £36.2 million, approximately €42 million.^[1][7][8]

Estimate, exact result and rounded report are three different numbers. The estimate described expectations before bidding. £36,160,000 is the reported result. £36.2 million is a useful rounded summary, not another sale.

The auction view from 10 to 23 June was temporary and ended before the sale. Neither Sotheby's nor Klimt Database identifies the buyer or exact present location. The position recorded on 9 August 2026 was private ownership, with neither the purchaser nor the painting's whereabouts public and no current exhibition confirmed.^[7][8]

Market visibility should not be mistaken for access. A painting can receive extensive publicity while becoming unavailable to viewers once the preview closes.

Why the Portrait Matters

Portrait of Gertrud Loew shows that Klimt's modernity did not depend on gold or overwhelming ornament. Narrowness, pale colour and tiny variations in ribbons and fabric make the sitter materialise from a field that nearly absorbs her. The likeness is present, but atmosphere shares the work of identity.

Its documentary history adds another kind of precision. Generic exhibition titles can be separated from sitter identity. Missing studies can remain missing rather than being replaced with guesses. Gertrud, Gertha and Felsőványi can be read as one life moving through marriage, work and exile. An unresolved Nazi-era transfer can be named without inventing its terms.

The 2014 settlement and the two sales also demonstrate that provenance is not finished when a price is published. The painting's current private owner holds an object whose public meaning includes the family that commissioned it, the woman who lost it under persecution, the transaction that cannot be reconstructed and the agreement that finally brought heirs into its modern ownership history.

Frequently Asked Questions

References

Accessed August 2026.

1. Sotheby's, “Bildnis Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsőványi) (Portrait of Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsőványi))”: exact title, signature, 1902 date, oil medium, dimensions, provenance, exhibitions, estimate and 2026 auction context. View source.
2. Gustav Klimt Database, “The Golden Knight and Femmes Fatales”: commission proposal, no-known-study status, narrow format, pale palette, signature comparison, first exhibition and Hevesi reception. View source.
3. Gustav Klimt Database, “The Loew Family”: sitter and family history, sanatorium role, persecution, emigration, provenance research and Washington Principles outcome. View source.
4. Klimt Foundation, “Provenance Research”: joint dossier, legal-panel conclusion, private-foundation status, voluntary Washington Principles settlement, export, 2015 auction and five separate drawings. View source.
5. Klimt Foundation and Sotheby's, “One of the Greatest Portraits by Gustav Klimt to Come to Auction,” 4 June 2015: sitter biography, sanatorium context, exile route, lost collection and settlement background. View source.
6. Klimt Foundation, “Portrait of Gertrud Loew: Decision of Joint Team of Legal Experts,” 10 September 2014: unresolved Nazi-era purchase, no postwar return and private Foundation commitment. View source.
7. Gustav Klimt Database, “The Portrait Gertrud Loew — Auction,” 24 June 2026: separate 2015 and 2026 results, rounded 2026 figure and current private status. View source.
8. Sotheby's, “Vienna, Klimt, Schiele and the Birth of Modern Portraiture,” 24 June 2026: exact £36,160,000 sale result and London sale date. View source.

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