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Edited by: Fern Sidman
Next month, London’s Christie’s auction house will feature a historically significant watercolor by the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele, ‘Boy in a Sailor Suit,’ with an estimated starting price of $1.3 million. As was recently reported in The New York Times, the sale comes after a settlement was brokered between the artwork’s consignor and the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, a Viennese cabaret performer who originally owned the piece before his tragic death in a Nazi concentration camp. The case of ‘Boy in a Sailor Suit’ is emblematic of the ongoing struggle to reclaim Nazi-looted art and highlights the legal and ethical complexities surrounding restitution.
According to the information provided in The New York Times report, Fritz Grünbaum was an outspoken critic of the Nazi regime and owned a vast collection of around 80 Schiele artworks. Following his 1938 arrest by the Gestapo, Grünbaum was held in Dachau, where he perished in 1941. His wife, Elisabeth, was later deported and murdered in 1942. The heirs of Grünbaum, particularly Timothy Reif and David Fraenkel, have spent decades working to recover his lost collection. Their efforts have led to several successful restitutions, with The New York Times report noting that Christie’s has already auctioned 12 such recovered works.
Despite mounting evidence presented by the heirs and support from Manhattan district attorney investigators, the restitution battle is far from over. One of the most contentious cases involves Schiele’s Russian War Prisoner, which remains in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Two separate federal court rulings determined that Grünbaum’s heirs had waited too long to file their claim to this particular artwork, effectively barring them from recovering it on procedural grounds,, according to The New York Times report. Furthermore, one of the federal judges found credible the claim that the work was legally acquired by Swiss art dealer Eberhard Kornfeld from Grünbaum’s sister-in-law, Mathilde Lukacs, in 1956. This ruling stands in contrast to New York state court decisions affirming the heirs’ rightful ownership of other Schiele pieces. As The New York Times highlights, this legal discrepancy underscores the complexity of art restitution cases, which often hinge on jurisdictional differences and evolving interpretations of provenance law.
Christie’s, which has a dedicated provenance research department focused on restitution issues, has taken a firm stance in favor of Grünbaum’s heirs. The New York Times reported that Richard Aronowitz, Christie’s head of restitution, has publicly stated that Grünbaum’s collection was “confiscated by the Nazis in post-Anschluss Austria.” The auction house has embraced the heirs’ position as they continue their fight to recover the hundreds of lost works.
Meanwhile, in Austria, two of Vienna’s most prestigious museums—the Albertina and the Leopold Museum—are engaged in their own legal battles with Grünbaum’s heirs. As reported by The New York Times, both institutions argue that Austria’s sovereign immunity shields them from U.S. lawsuits seeking restitution of Schiele works in their collections. This legal strategy has been employed by multiple European museums to resist claims on Nazi-looted art, frustrating heirs who continue to seek justice decades after World War II. Despite these legal roadblocks, The New York Times notes that growing public scrutiny and recent high-profile restitutions have intensified pressure on institutions to revisit their holdings and assess their ethical responsibilities.
The upcoming sale of ‘Boy in a Sailor Suit’ adds another layer to this ongoing restitution narrative. The painting’s consignor, a German woman who purchased the work at Sotheby’s in 1992, was unaware of its Grünbaum provenance until recently, according to Dirk Boll, the managing director of Christie’s in Germany. As The New York Times reported, upon learning of its history, she asked Christie’s to facilitate an agreement with Grünbaum’s heirs. She has since pledged to donate her proceeds from the sale to a kindergarten in Munich, while a portion of the auction’s earnings will also benefit the heirs’ Grünbaum Fischer Foundation, which supports performing artists.
The painting itself has been described as a masterful example of Schiele’s distinctive style. Michelle McMullan, the Christie’s specialist overseeing the March sale of 20th- and 21st-century art, praised ‘Boy in a Sailor Suit’ as “one of the best watercolors I have handled,” according to the report in The New York Times. She highlighted its unfinished elements, such as the missing left hand, which she said “evoke movement and spontaneity.” Schiele’s work was condemned as “degenerate art” by the Nazis, but today, his pieces are celebrated as some of the most innovative expressions of early 20th-century modernism.
For Grünbaum’s heirs, the sale of this painting is not just about financial restitution, but also about preserving the legacy of their relative, who was both an esteemed art collector and a fearless critic of fascism. “This is another moment to celebrate the memory of our family member, who was a brave artist, art collector, and opponent of Fascism,” Timothy Reif said in a press statement, as quoted by The New York Times. Yet, as The New York Times points out, the unresolved legal disputes surrounding other Schiele works serve as a stark reminder that the broader fight for restitution is far from over.
The ongoing legal battles over the Grünbaum collection reflect a broader trend of increasing accountability for institutions and private collectors holding potentially looted artworks. The New York Times report recalled the landmark 2018 ruling by the New York Supreme Court, which affirmed that Grünbaum never voluntarily relinquished his collection and declared his heirs the rightful owners of two Schiele drawings held by art dealer Richard Nagy. That decision was upheld in 2019 by a New York appeals court, setting a legal precedent that has since influenced subsequent cases.
Building upon those rulings, Manhattan prosecutors have seized several Schiele artworks in recent years from U.S. museums and collectors. As The New York Times report indicated, in 2023 and 2024 alone, institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Carnegie Museum of Art restituted multiple Schiele works to Grünbaum’s heirs. These developments signify a shift in how restitution claims are handled, with growing recognition of the moral and legal obligation to return stolen artworks.
With the auction of ‘Boy in a Sailor Suit,’ the Grünbaum case takes another step forward in the global debate over looted art. While some heirs have found pathways to reclaiming their stolen heritage, The New York Times report highlighted that others continue to face resistance from museums and legal systems reluctant to revisit historical injustices. As the struggle for restitution continues, this auction stands as a testament to both the resilience of Grünbaum’s descendants and the enduring complexity of righting the wrongs of the past.
