Wally Suit Suspended for New Evidence

NEW YORK—The long-running lawsuit between the U.S. government and the Leopold Museum in Vienna over the Egon Schiele painting Portrait of Wally has been suspended in order to let the U.S. government review new evidence, reports the Art Newspaper. The case was brought against the museum in 1999 by the U.S. government, which claims that the Leopold knew the work was stolen by a Nazi from its Jewish owner, Lea Bondi, in 1939. It is being pursued under the U.S. National Stolen Property Act before the federal district court in Manhattan.

According to the U.S. and the Bondi estate, Nazi art dealer Friedrich Welz went to Bondi's apartment in Vienna in 1939 and pressured her to give up the painting. After the war, U.S. forces misclassified the painting as the property of Heinrich Rieger, who died at the Theresienstadt concentration camp, causing it to end up at the Austrian National Gallery, which bought Rieger's collection from his heirs. The U.S. claims it alerted the ANG of the mix-up, but the gallery "wrongfully took Wally for itself" anyway.

Bondi says she asked Rudolph Leopold to help her reclaim the painting in 1953, but instead, he acquired it for himself in 1954. The U.S. alleges that neither the ANG nor Leopold had the requisite amount of "confidence" in their ownership to gain title under the Austrian "prescriptive possession" law, which requires that property be held for six years with the firm belief that the ownership is lawful.

The Leopold Museum argues that it rightfully owns the painting, saying that the work ceased to be "stolen" when it was recovered by U.S. forces in 1947. Also, the museum claims that Bondi and her heirs' "total and unbroken silence" from 1957 to 1997 resulted in unreasonable delay and the death of nine key witnesses.

Portrait of Wally is currently being held by the U.S. government. If forfeited, it will go to the Bondi estate. The present lawsuit is widely acknowledged as a major prompter to museums to re-examine the Nazi-era past of their artworks.