by Catherine Sezgin,
ARCA Blog Editor-in-Chief
Lea Bondi’s grand niece, Ruth Rozanek,
told the filmmakers of “Portrait of Wally” that Lea Bondi would have liked to
have gotten her portrait back but that in the 1950s Bondi didn’t have the
financial resources for a legal fight and the value of the painting – barely
worth $1,000 then – couldn’t justify a costly legal battle in a country where
she could not be sure to be given fair consideration as a Jew after the war in
Austria. Lea Bondi died in 1969. In 1972, Rudolf Leopold published a book
on Schiele and obliterated Lea Bondi’s name from the list of owners of Portrait of Wally.
Director Andrew Shea’s film “Portrait of Wally”
documents the legal strategies of the state of New York who wanted to establish
the true ownership of the painting against the museums and art galleries who
expressed their opinion and strong influence against what they considered the
government’s interference.
The Museum of Modern Art, chaired by Ronald
Lauder, wanted to return Portrait of Wally (and a second painting by Egon Schiele Dead
City) to the Leopold Museum. MoMA
moved to quash the subpoena. The
art community had assumed that artworks were usually immune from such actions,
the New York Times reported. The
Wall Street Journal said that Morgenthau had taken ‘momentary leave of his
senses’.
Museums feared their
ability to borrower paintings internationally would be hurt. “Museums and the public could be severely
damaged as a consequence,” Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, told the New York Times.
Glenn D.
Lowry, Executive Director, Museum of Modern Art., before the House Banking
Committee on February 12, 1998: “The district attorney’s action of barring the
return of the painting to the lender has the potential of seriously affecting
the future of art loans in this country. Unless we can assure lenders that
American art museums will return borrowed works of art, lenders, fearing seizures,
will simply not lend. That would
be a disaster for the American public which has come to expect first class
exhibitions at all art institutions across this great land.”
Ori Z.
Soltes, Former Director, National Jewish Museum, Co-Founder, Holocaust Art
Restitution Project: “Then the entire museum community fell in line with this
perspective of don’t mess with internal museum affairs, you government and
other kinds of bureaucrats because you don’t understand.”
Even Ronald Lauder, who founded the
Commission on Art Recovery in 1998, wanted the painting returned to
Austria. The filmmakers discuss Lauder's various conflicts as an underwriter of the Schiele exhibition at MoMA and as former US
Ambassador to Austria in 1986-1987.
Launder, a major collector of Egon Schiele’s works, also purchased Gustav
Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer from Maria Altmann and her family in
2006.
This documentary discusses the
controversial NPR story in 2004 on Portrait of Wally and the subsequent
suspension of correspondent David D’Arcy (also co-writer of this film).
Attorneys Howard Spiegler and Larry Kaye fought for
years on behalf of the Estate of Lea Bondi. Finally, a trial date was set for July 2010. All that was to be decided, the film said, was whether
or not Leopold knew that “Portrait of Wally” had been stolen when he brought
the painting into the United States for the Schiele exhibition at MoMA in 1997.
Then Dr. Leopold died weeks before the
trial. His wife, Dr. Elisabeth
Leopold, offered the Estate of Lea Bondi $19 million for Portrait of Wally to
return to the Leopold Museum in Vienna, to join the artist’s self-portrait
painted on the same day he had immortalized his lover. It was her husband’s wish to settle,
Elisabeth Leopold said publicly.
The attorneys, who had taken the case on contingency received about
one-third of the money for the painting and the rest was divided amongst the 50
family members of the Estate of Lea Bondi.
The painting was first displayed at the
Jewish Heritage Museum in lower Manhattan before it was returned to Vienna and
re-installed at the Leopold Museum.
This time, the story of Lea Bondi’s ownership of the Portrait of Wally
is confirmed and it is clarified that she never lost title to the painting
during the decades she and her family searched for the stolen painting.
The
film notes at the end:
Shortly
after painting Portrait of Wally Schiele left Wally for a respectable
middle-class girl, Edith Harms, whom he married in 1915. Schiele never saw Wally again. Edith
died of influenza in 1918. She was six months pregnant with Schiele’s child. Schiele
contracted the virus and died three days later at the age of 28. Wally
volunteered to serve as a nurse. She
died of scarlet fever during World War One.
In
1998, the Austrian Parliament, responding to the Manhattan District Attorney’s
seizure of Portrait of Wally and Dead City, passed a new restitution law.
In
the following years the Belvedere and other Austrian museums returned hundreds
of millions of dollars worth of art that had been stolen by the Nazis.
This
restitution law does not apply to the Leopold Museum, which is considered a
private foundation, not a public museum.
Directed
by Andrew Shea
Written
by Andrew Shea and David D’Arcy
Produced
by David D’Arcy, Barbara Morgan, and Andrew Shea
This
project was funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the
Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts.
art forgery,authenticity,fakes,forger,psychology of forgers
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art forgery,authenticity,fakes,forger,psychology of forgers
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