Woman in Gold

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Woman in Gold: Gustave Klimt

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Gustave Klimt Oil Painting - Woman in Gold

Keywords: Woman, Gold

Work Overview: The Lady in Gold (The Woman in Gold; Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I)
Artist Gustav Klimt
Year 1907
Type Oil, silver, and gold on canvas
Dimensions 138 cm × 138 cm (54 in × 54 in)
Location Neue Galerie, New York

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (also called The Lady in Gold or The Woman in Gold) is a painting by Gustav Klimt, completed between 1903 and 1907. The portrait was commissioned by the sitter's husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer (de), a Jewish banker and sugar producer. The painting was stolen by the Nazis in 1941 and displayed at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere. In 2006, following eight years of effort by the Bloch-Bauer heirs, the painting was returned to the family; it was sold the same year for $135 million, at the time a record price for a painting.

The Woman in Gold (Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I) is perhaps the most famous representation of Klimt’s use of gold leaf in his oil paintings. Not only was the painting itself a dazzling piece of art, the story of the woman (the subject) and her relationship with Klimt created intrigue and earned her the moniker of ‘Mona Lisa of Austria’. The painting also gained publicity after becoming the subject of a long standing lawsuit for rightful ownership filed by Adele’s niece Maria Altmann against Austrian authorities. The story served as the subject of the 2015 movie Woman in Gold.

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Woman in Gold is a 2015 drama film and biographical film directed by Simon Curtis and written by Alexi Kaye Campbell. The film stars Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Brühl, Katie Holmes, Tatiana Maslany, Max Irons, Charles Dance, Elizabeth McGovern and Jonathan Pryce.

The film is based on the true story of Maria Altmann, an elderly Jewish refugee living in Cheviot Hills, Los Angeles, who, together with her young lawyer, Randy Schoenberg, fought the government of Austria for almost a decade to reclaim Gustav Klimt's iconic painting of her aunt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, which was stolen from her relatives by the Nazis in Vienna just prior to World War II. Altmann took her legal battle all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled on the case Republic of Austria v. Altmann (2004).

The film was screened in the Berlinale Special Galas section of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival on 9 February 2015, and was released in the United Kingdom on 1 April 2015 and in the United States on 10 April.

In a series of flashbacks throughout the film, Maria Altmann recalls the arrival of Nazi forces in Vienna, and the subsequent suppression of the Jewish community and the looting and pillaging conducted by the Nazis against Jewish families. Seeking to escape before the country is completely shut off, Maria Altmann and members of her family attempt to flee to the United States. While Altmann and her husband are successful in their escape, she is forced to abandon her parents in Vienna.

In the present, living in Los Angeles, a now elderly and widowed Altmann attends the funeral for her sister. She discovers letters in her sister's possession dating to the late 1940s, which reveal an attempt to recover artwork owned by the Bloch-Bauer family that was left behind during the family's flight for freedom and subsequently stolen by the Nazis. Of particular note is a painting of Altmann's aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, now known in Austria as the "Woman in Gold".

Altmann enlists the help of E. Randol Schoenberg (the son of her close friend, Barbara), a lawyer with little experience, to make a claim to the art restitution board in Austria. Reluctantly returning to her homeland, Altmann discovers that the country's minister and art director are unwilling to part with the painting, which they feel has become part of the national identity. Altmann is told that the painting was in fact legitimately willed to the gallery by her aunt. Upon further investigation by her lawyer and Austrian journalist Hubertus Czernin, this claim proves to be incorrect, as the alleged will is invalid due to the fact that her aunt did not own the painting in question, the artist's fee having been paid by Altmann's uncle; moreover, Adele Bloch-Bauer wanted the painting to go to the museum at her husband's death while in fact it was taken from him by the Nazis and placed in the museum by a Nazi-collaborating curator, well before his death. Schoenberg files a challenge with the art restitution board, but it is denied and Altmann does not have the money needed to challenge the ruling. Defeated, she and Schoenberg return to the United States.

Months thereafter, happening upon an art book with "Woman in Gold" on the cover, Schoenberg has an epiphany. Using a narrow rule of law and precedents in which an art restitution law was retroactively applied, Schoenberg files a claim in US court against the Austrian government contesting their claim to the painting. An appeal goes to the Supreme Court of the United States, where in the matter of Republic of Austria v. Altmann, the court rules in Altmann's favor, which results in the Austrian government attempting to persuade Altmann to retain the painting for the gallery, which she refuses. After a falling out over the issue of returning to Austria for a second time to argue the case, Altmann agrees for Schoenberg to go and argue the case in front of an arbitration panel of three arbiters in Vienna.

In Austria, the arbitration panel hears the case, during which time they are reminded of the Nazi regime's war crimes by Schoenberg. Schoenberg implores the arbitration panel to think of the meaning of the word "restitution" and to look past the artwork hanging in art galleries to see the injustice to the families who once owned such great paintings and were forcibly separated from them by the Nazis. Unexpectedly, Altmann arrives during the session indicating to Czernin that she came to support her lawyer. After considering both sides of the dispute, the arbitration panel rules in favour of Altmann, returning her paintings. The Austrian government representative makes a last minute proposal begging Altmann to keep the paintings in the Belvedere against a generous compensation. Altmann refuses and elects to have the painting moved to the United States with her ("They will now travel to America like I once had to as well"), and takes up an offer made earlier by Ronald Lauder to acquire them for his New York gallery to display the painting on condition that it be a permanent exhibit.

Film critics in Austria and Germany noted various deviations of the film from historical reality. Olga Kronsteiner from the Austrian daily Der Standard wrote that, contrary to the film, it was not Maria Altmann's lawyer, Randol Schönberg, who researched and initiated the restitution case, but Austrian journalist Hubertus Czernin, who had worked on a number of restitution files at the time, who found the decisive documents and subsequently informed Maria Altmann.[17]

Hubertus Czernin, who is depicted in the movie, is suggested to have been motivated by the fact that his father had been a member of the Nazi Party; but Stefan Grissemann from Austrian weekly Profil pointed out that his father's party membership was not known to Czernin until 2006, long after he had started to work on this and other restitution cases; and that in addition Czernin's father was imprisoned by the Nazis late in the war for high treason.[citation needed]

Thomas Trenkler from the Viennese daily Kurier criticized the film's reference to a time limit for restitution claims in Austria, writing that there has never been such a time limit. He also wrote that his least favorite scene in the film was when Maria Altmann leaves her ailing father in Vienna in 1938. Despite the imminent danger, Maria Altmann stayed in Vienna, having said, "I would never have left my father! He died of natural causes in July 1938". Only then did she and her husband escape from Vienna.[18]

The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (The Woman in Gold) was sold to Lauder's Neue Galerie in New York for $135 million based on an earlier agreement between Altmann and Ronald Lauder, a part of which is shown in the film.

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On April 2, 2015, Neue Galerie New York will open "Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer: The Woman in Gold," an intimate exhibition devoted to the close relationship that existed between the artist and one of his key subjects and patrons. Included in the exhibition will be a display of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, paintings, related drawings, vintage photographs, decorative arts, and archival material. The show will be on view through September 7, 2015.

This exhibition coincides with the opening of the historical drama "Woman in Gold," starring Helen Mirren as Adele Bloch-Bauer's niece Maria Altmann, and Ryan Reynolds as lawyer Randol Schoenberg. The Weinstein Company is set to release the film in U.S. theaters on April 3, 2015. The film is based upon the incredible true story of how Altmann, working in collaboration with Schoenberg, successfully sued the Austrian Government for the return of five Klimt paintings seized by the Nazis from the Bloch-Bauer family townhouse in Vienna during World War II.

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is one of the most important artists of fin-de-siècle Vienna. Trained at Vienna's Kunstgewerbeschule, Klimt began his career in a traditional and historicist style, but quickly emerged as one of Vienna's preeminent modern artists, creating ebullient landscapes, striking portraits, and erotic drawings of women. Klimt was a key figure in Vienna's art scene, and is one whose artistic achievements and mentorship paved the way for painters Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele.

"Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer: The Woman in Gold" will be displayed on the second floor of the museum and will be comprised of approximately 50 works, including the Adele Bloch-Bauer I, paintings, related drawings, vintage photographs, decorative arts, as well as archival material. The show is organized by Janis Staggs, Associate Director of Curatorial and Publications at Neue Galerie New York. The highlight of this display will be Klimtís stunning 1907 "golden style" portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, as well as related sketches prepared during the four years that he worked on this iconic masterpiece. The exhibition will also feature a number of rare photographs of Klimt and material about the Bloch-Bauer family.

Adele Bloch-Bauer possesses the rare distinction as the only person Klimt ever painted twice. Following the outcry surrounding Klimt' s most controversial public commission -three faculty paintings that were to be installed in the Great Hall of Vienna University (Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence, 1900-07)- Klimt withdrew from government projects and focused his energies on private portrait commissions of society women from Vienna's cultural elite.

Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer assembled one of Vienna's most renowned art collections, which included paintings by masters of Vienna's Biedermeier period, modern sculpture, an impressive array of porcelain from the Royal Vienna Porcelain Factory, and a stellar group of works by Klimt, including the two portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer and also landscapes. The Klimt paintings originally hung in Adele's private apartment in the couple's Vienna home.

Klimt's 1907 Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I was acquired for Neue Galerie New York in 2006. At the time of the acquisition, the museum's President and co-founder, Ronald S. Lauder, stated: "With this dazzling painting, Klimt created one of his greatest works of art." During the years that Klimt labored over the commission, he spent time in Ravenna, Italy, where he visited the sixth-century Church of San Vitale. He was deeply impressed by the richly decorated Byzantine mosaics of the Empress Theodora and described them as of "unprecedented splendor." His first portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer incorporates jewel-like areas that resemble semi-precious stones and layers of lustrous gold and silver.

A series of lectures will be held in conjunction with this special exhibition, including presentations by scholar Dr. Alessandra Comini, curator of "Egon Schiele: Portraits"; Anne-Marie O'Connor, author of The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece; and Janis Staggs, curator of "Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer: The Woman in Gold."

The Neue Galerie will celebrate Klimt in other parts of the museum as well. Café Sabarsky will feature its special Klimttorte during this period. The Design Shop will offer gold and silver cufflinks designed by Josef Hoffmann for Gustav Klimt, a set produced exclusively for Neue Galerie by First Edition. The Book Store will carry Anne-Marie O'Connor's The Lady in Gold and monographs on Klimt.

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As legend has it, Gustav Klimt‘s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907), the dazzling gold Secessionist-era painting, was stolen by the Nazis in Austria in the late 1930s and eventually returned to the heirs of the original owner after a lengthy court battle. Now, the painting is on safer ground at the heart of the intimate exhibition “Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer: The Woman in Gold,” which opens today at the Neue Galerie.

Aided by the publicity surrounding the release this week of Woman in Gold, a major Hollywood film about the painting starring Helen Mirren, it seems the artwork’s dramatic backstory is moving front and center. (See: Germany Criticized for Bureaucratic “Bullying” Over Gurlitt Restoration and Monet Landscape Found in Gurlitt’s Suitcase).

It is not hard to see why it’s considered one of Klimt’s best works. The portrait, which took three years for Klimt to complete, shows Adele Bloch-Bauer (the wife of Austrian sugar magnate Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer) seated, decked out in elaborate jewelry and an elaborately-patterned gown with flowing fabric that virtually melds into her sumptuous surroundings.

Experts have frequently focused on Adele’s sensual expression and Klimt’s erotic depiction of her. Speculation about a probable love affair between artist and sitter seems to have only ever deepened the public’s fascination with the painting over the years.

Adele died of meningitis in 1925. In 1938, Nazis seized the painting along with much of the contents of the Bloch-Bauers’ home. The work was eventually hung at the Belvedere Museum in Austria, which claimed ownership based on Adele’s 1923 will.

However, when the Austrian government opened its archives in 1998, additional information related to the case was made public. Ferdinand, who died in Switzerland in 1945 after having fled Austria during the war, had left his estate, in part, to Maria Altmann, who also fled Austria and eventually settled in Los Angeles.

In 2006, when businessman and renowned art collector Ronald Lauder learned the work was coming back to the US from Austria, he shelled out $135 million for the painting. Lauder, a co-founder of Neue Galerie, has referred to the work as his museum’s “Mona Lisa,” and a “once in a lifetime acquisition.” (See: Why Ronald Lauder is Right About Nazi Looted Art in Museums.)

At a press conference at the Neue Galerie last week, Lauder reflected on his relationship with Altmann whose efforts through an eight-year legal battle helped secure the work’s return in 2006. Lauder said she sometimes admitted to him she was getting “tired” of fighting and feared she would not live to see the work’s return.

Altmann died in 2011 at the age of 94. Lauder, who was standing next to the painting, said “If it wasn’t for Maria Altmann, this painting would still be hanging in the Belvedere.”

The exhibition, which continues through September 7, features the painting along with fascinating historical materials about Klimt, as well as preparatory sketches, vintage photos, jewelry and other archival materials.

We talked with director Renee Price about the organization of the exhibition, which she accurately described as “an obligation,” in light of the new film.

Price recounted how Altmann continued to live in her modest Los Angeles bungalow following the return of the works. “The only thing she wanted was a new dishwasher.”

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In Woman in Gold, Helen Mirren plays Maria Altmann — an octogenarian Jewish refugee who fought to recover the Gustav Klimt paintings the Nazis seized from her family in Vienna at the outset of World War II. On Friday, Mirren received an award for her performance at New York's Neue Galerie, which is now home to more Klimts than anywhere else in the country.

The Neue collection includes a 1907 portrait of Altmann's aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer — the woman in gold. Several of Klimt's other portraits have joined Adele Bloch-Bauer at the Galerie in an exhibit on display until Sept. 7.

One of those portraits — The Dancer — was painted in 1917, and it was one of Klimt's last. The real dancer's name was Ria Munk. She took her own life at age 24 after an unhappy love affair, explains museum director Renée Price.

She was in love with an impoverished poet who got cold feet and broke up with her in a letter. "She took a revolver and shot herself in the chest," Price says. "Her parents were so devastated that they wanted Klimt to make a posthumous portrait of her."

Lovely young Ria stands surrounded by colorful, densely painted flowers. Her robe, open at the breasts, is patterned green and red. The portrait is decorative and joyful.

The Dancer was the first Klimt to be shown in the United States, says curator Janis Staggs. "So that's how Americans first began to think of Klimt, as this person who painted these luscious, beautiful portraits of women — kind of idealizing them," Staggs explains.

But the best-known Klimt woman here is Adele Bloch-Bauer, or, as some have called her: "The Mona Lisa of Austria."

Klimt titled the portrait simply Adele Bloch-Bauer, but when the Nazis seized the painting and displayed it in the early 1940s, they removed her name and called her The Woman in Gold instead.

"They took away her identity," Staggs says. Without a Jewish name, the work became appropriate to show in Hitler's Third Reich. "So it is a betrayal on the grandest scale."

It was a violation, enacted by officials who knew exactly who she was. From a prominent family, Adele Bauer was the daughter of a banker and the wife of Ferdinand Bloch. (In sweets-loving Vienna, Bloch made his fortune in sugar). He was nearly twice her age — their marriage was arranged when she was just 18.

Her life in the 1890s was one of leisure — there were servants, fittings, art shows and the opera. There were no universities for Viennese women.

"So if you were her generation or earlier you coped by hosting a salon," Staggs explains. "Writers, politicians, intellectuals, musicians — [and] artists such as Klimt."

Adele's loving husband commissioned their illustrious friend Gustav Klimt to paint two portraits of her. (Adele Bloch-Bauer II is at the Museum of Modern Art).

"He was, by the early 20th century, the most beloved and widely known Austrian artist of his day," Staggs says.

Most of his clients were wealthy Jews, and owning a Klimt was a mark of prestige. "I think to those families it was a way of saying they had made it," Staggs says.

Klimt — in his long artists smock which he wore, according to reliable sources, with nothing underneath (he had some 14 illegitimate children) — spent four years painting his tall, slim subject. He puts Adele in a throne-like chair. Her long neck is sheathed in a gem-encrusted choker. Her voluminous gown is covered in geometric patterns inspired by gold-embedded mosaics he'd seen on a trip to Ravenna, Italy. The dress is three-dimensional in some places — the paint built up and off the canvas. He painted not only with oil, but also layered in gold and silver leaf, Staggs says.

Adele has a cloud of black hair piled on top of her head, and thick, lush eyebrows. "Her lips have this rosy tint — they're full, slightly parted," Staggs says. That sort of sign of sensuality was unusual in portraits of that time.

Her hands are clasped in front of her chest in a strange, awkward position. "She had a disfigured little finger; she was very self-conscious about this," Staggs says.

Adele's eyes — heavy-lidded and dark in her pale face — hint of life in a gilded cage. There's sadness in them. For all her wealth and privilege, Adele Bloch-Bauer had much to bear.

"She suffered poor health all her life," Staggs says. She was frail, suffered bad migraines and was a chain smoker.

And she experienced great tragedies as well — two miscarriages and a son who died just a few days after he was born. She was 22 when Klimt began this portrait, and those losses show in her eyes.

"She can perceive for herself what the rest of her life will hold. The opportunities she had dreamed of as a young girl were going to be denied," says Staggs.

Adele died of meningitis in 1925 at age 43. The prominent artist who painted her portrait — which was shown in Germany, Vienna and Switzerland in her lifetime — had made her into a secular icon. Staggs theorizes that was a gift to both of them.

"The unhappiness that she felt in real life — he could offer her something in this eternity that he created by becoming this icon of Vienna in the early 20th century," Staggs says. "It helped realize both his ambitions artistically but also hers as a woman — and what she wanted to be but couldn't."

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The Moment: Thursday morning, Ronald Lauder, the cosmetics executive and president of the World Jewish Congress, who is also co-founder of the Neue Galerie in Manhattan, was standing in the museum in front of the Gustav Klimt's 1907 portrait of “Adele Bloch-Bauer I.” The painting, which has also been known as “The Woman in Gold,” is one of Klimt’s most famous works, one that has inspired countless designers over decades, and also one with a fascinating history that is the subject of a new film being released on Wednesday.

Woman in Gold, starring Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds, tells the story of Maria Altmann, who fought a decade-long legal battle to get back her family’s art collection, which had been seized by the Nazis when her ancestors fled Austria. The portrait of Bloch-Bauer, a prime example of Klimt’s gold-period, was sold to Lauder in 2006 and has become a centerpiece of the Neue Galerie’s collection of German and Austrian art from the early 20th century.

“In Woman in Gold, worldwide audiences will see how difficult that was,” Lauder said. “There are something like 100,000 works of art still unaccounted for. For many of them, we know where they are, but we still can’t get to them.”

Why It’s a Wow: Klimt’s portrait, with Bloch-Bauer presented in a gown of glittering gold, was the first undertaken after his trip to Ravenna, Italy, in 1903, where he had been inspired by the 6th-century Byzantine mosaics. Many of his sketches for the work are now on display at the Neue Galerie, offering a unique window into the process of a painter who had a special connection to fashion through his friendship with the designer Emilie Flöge. Flöge was a proponent of the reform style of dress that is seen in many of his paintings, reflecting a movement in Vienna in the early 1900s to reject the corset and promote more individual forms of dress, most notably looser-fitting, artistically designed gowns.

It is hardly surprising that the works from that period have inspired free-thinking designers ever since, even as recently as the fall collection of Valentino designers Marie Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, shown this month in Paris with a nod to both Flöge and Celia Birtwell, the wife and muse of Ossie Clark. Also inspired by the painting was Aerin Lauder, who created a special lipstick collection under her Aerin label for the Neue Galerie. The limited-edition set, for $64, includes two shades, one called Liebling, designed after the warm blush tones of Bloch-Bauer’s lips, the other called Sequin, after the gold shimmer of her dress.

Learn More: Visit the Neue Galerie for a special exhibition, “Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer: The Woman in Gold,” opening Tuesday, for more insight into the artist’s creation of the painting over four years, as well as the life of his subject.

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The mesmerising radiance of Adele Bloch-Bauer’s gaze in Gustav Klimt’s gold-flecked 1907 portrait of her provides no hint of the turbulent fate that lay in store for the painting. Commissioned by her sugar-industrialist husband Ferdinand, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I took Klimt three years to create, and was completed amid speculation that the Austrian artist and his high-society subject were lovers. Following Adele’s death in 1925 from meningitis, the masterpiece remained in the Bloch-Bauers’ Vienna townhouse until the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938. Targeted amid the Nazis’ cultural looting spree, it was one of five Klimt paintings taken from the Bloch-Bauer residence, with the pictures ending up in Vienna’s Belvedere Gallery. Ferdinand died in exile in Switzerland in 1945.

The Nazis also stole an engagement ring belonging to Maria Altmann, Adele’s niece. Altmann escaped from Austria, making her way to Los Angeles with her husband, where she opened a dress boutique. When the Austrian government passed a restitution law in 1998, ruling that property stolen by the Nazis could be returned to its rightful owners, Maria Altmann — now in her 80s — began a legal battle to regain the Klimts that belonged to her family, which included a second portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. She partnered with inexperienced lawyer Randol Schoenberg — grandson of her aunt’s composer friend Arnold Schoenberg — for what became a protracted battle for justice against the Austrian authorities, the latter erroneously arguing that they legally owned the pictures.

Altmann needed to obtain proof that Adele’s stated wish to leave the paintings to the Belvedere Museum was superseded by the will of Ferdinand (the legal owner), who named his nieces as heirs, and secure a ruling from the United States Supreme Court, permitting her to sue Austria in an American court. An arbitration panel in Vienna would ultimately award Altmann ownership of the paintings. In June 2006 cosmetics magnate Ronald Lauder purchased Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I for $135 million — then the highest price ever paid for a painting — for display in Manhattan’s Neue Galerie, a sale brokered by Christie’s. The other Klimts were sold at a Christie’s sale of Impressionist and Modern Art later that year.

In 2007 filmmaker Simon Curtis happened to see a BBC documentary about Altmann, Stealing Klimt, and unsurprisingly thought the remarkable tale was tailor-made for Hollywood. His resulting movie is Woman in Gold, starring Dame Helen Mirren as Maria Altmann and Ryan Reynolds as her lawyer, Schoenberg. The film switches between Adele Bloch-Bauer in turn-of-the-century Vienna, the upheaval suffered by the family in the wake of the Nazi occupation of Austria, and Maria’s legal crusade towards the end of her life (she died in 2011). ‘It’s a courtroom drama, an escape thriller and an odd-couple film,’ comments Curtis. The one constant is Klimt’s portrait itself. ‘It’s a witness to the themes of the film,’ Curtis says. ‘It’s the Mona Lisa of Austria, but it’s also symbolic of the golden years of Vienna. This happens to be a masterpiece that you can find on jam jars, slippers and T-shirts, but nothing about the reproductions prepares you for its magnificence when you first see it.’

According to Curtis, Woman in Gold is not merely the narrative of a painting, but a portrait of a century. ‘It’s one of the great stories of the 20th century,’ he notes. ‘Maria was born during that remarkable time in Vienna when it had become the crucible for all the great ideas of the 20th century. Art, music, science and psychology were merging together. Then there was this extraordinary chain of events, and at the conclusion of the century both Maria and the painting ended up in the United States.’

Woman in Gold wears its heart, as well as its art, on its sleeve. ‘It’s about an emotional connection with the paintings because they were on the wall of this family home that has been destroyed,’ Curtis says. The fact that Mirren and Curtis themselves descend from families that fled wartime Eastern Europe during the 20th century enhanced their affinity with Altmann, although they never met her. ‘We talked to Randi a lot but, probably even better, we watched hours and hours of Maria’s interviews, which gave Helen and I a real sense of who she was,’ says Curtis. Mirren said recently: ‘Through the material I had the great pleasure of getting to know Maria Altmann, who was such a remarkable, wonderful, funny, sexy, witty, humane and great woman.’

Stephen Lash, Chairman Emeritus of Christie’s Americas, did know Maria Altmann very well, originally through his interest in restitution cases. ‘Maria was one of the most memorable people I’ve ever met,’ he says. ‘She’s the kind of person you would walk into a restaurant with and the maître d’ would stand and talk to her. If you got into a cab with her, you did so at your peril because the cab driver wouldn’t be watching the traffic. He would be turning around and talking to this charming woman in the back.’

Lash had a ringside seat as Altmann fought her legal battle against the Austrian government to reclaim her family’s property. ‘What I remember was her total lack of self-interest and total lack of greed,’ he says, adding that her motivations were as pure as the film portrays. ‘I have no doubt it was righting a wrong,’ he answers when asked what drove Maria to go to the lengths she did to achieve recompense. ‘She did it in the most elegant and correct, gentle but powerful way.’

Altmann was incredibly loyal as well as tenacious, he adds, citing both her decision to retain Schoenberg, thereby ignoring advice to hire a more experienced lawyer, and her choosing Christie’s to sell the Klimts once she was awarded the paintings. ‘Her lawyers kept saying to her, “We’ve got to make this competitive between the auction houses and you’ve got to get the best possible deal.” Maria said, “You can do whatever you want but I’m going with Lash!”.’

The Austrian authorities underestimated their octogenarian opponent. ‘I remember Maria telling me she went to Vienna and met with one of the ministries, and she was willing to do a deal with them on the basis that they got the portraits and that the family got back the landscapes,’ Lash recalls. ‘She would have settled on that basis and they would have got the gold portrait, but they said, “Nothing doing”. That’s when she pursued the case.’

With the help of the late investigative journalist Hubertus Czernin, played in the film by Daniel Brühl, Maria proved that Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer had named his nieces as heirs. At times, said Lash, the fight was farcical. ‘I had a good time watching the expressions of the judges during the Supreme Court case, particularly Judge [Clarence] Thomas who dozed off for a good part of the hearing. I kept a record based on their facial expressions of who would be voting which way, and I wasn’t far wrong.’

Austria vs. Altmann was a landmark case for restitution according to Monica Dugot, International Director of Restitution at Christie’s. ‘It was at a time when, while there were a number of restitution claims pending, there hadn’t been such a major victory,’ she explains. ‘Many claimants had tried to recover their cultural heritage and given up because of the obstacles in their way. Whenever a family sees a huge success like this it inspires other families to have the courage to think, “Let’s go for it and try to recover our family property and heritage”.’

Once Maria Altmann had reclaimed her property Lash introduced her to Ronald Lauder, who bought Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I for the Neue Galerie, where it presently spearheads an exhibition to coincide with the film. ‘We knew that it would become the most expensive picture ever sold,’ says Lash. ‘But it was a high risk to put it at auction because at that time there were no similar Klimts that had ever approached anything more than $5 million. So it made sense for us to sell the most valuable piece at $130 million on a private basis, and with that comparable established in the market, to offer the other four pieces at auction.’

Altmann’s four Klimt paintings were sold at a record-breaking Christie’s sale of Impressionist and Modern Art in November 2006. ‘It was one of the most extraordinary sales I was ever involved in,’ recalls the evening’s auctioneer, Christopher Burge. ‘The highlight was the Klimts, which far and away exceeded anything we thought they were going to bring.’ For Lash the sale reinforced the notion that, ‘The auction world is a business based on relationships, not transactions.’ Prior to joining Christie’s he was a Vice-President at S.G. Warburg & Co, and paraphrasing Siegmund Warburg’s dictum on bankers, he says, ‘You can’t be someone’s auctioneer until you’re their friend. Maria Altmann was my friend.’

The fight for restitution will go on long after Woman in Gold has left cinemas. ‘Although many families have been looking for their property for more than 65 years, the evolution and the infrastructure of the field has made it much more possible to locate and restitute objects than in the past,’ said Monica Dugot. ‘With greater access and availability of resources, heirs are coming forward as there are still hundreds of thousands of works still missing. The story is far from over.’

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That's quite a painting," someone says in "Woman in Gold" on first glimpsing Gustav Klimt's celebrated "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I," and anyone seeing the artwork in person during its brief visit to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art or at its current home at New York's Neue Galerie would have to agree.

The saga of how this dazzling work, sometimes known as "the Mona Lisa of Austria," came to leave the walls of Vienna's august Belvedere Gallery to take up permanent residence in the United States is quite a story as well.

And, as the fact that three documentaries touch on its narrative makes clear, any tale involving art history, Nazi thievery, conflicting wills and complex international legal wrangles is certainly worthy of cinematic treatment.

With all these good things going for it, it's regrettable that "Woman in Gold" is no more than adequate, more old-fashioned Hollywoodization than incisive modern dramatization. But the film does have an asset that can't be ignored, and that's Helen Mirren's tip-top performance as the film's costar. It's not enough to save the picture, but it certainly makes a difference.

Mirren stars as Maria Altmann, Adele Bloch-Bauer's niece, an imperious Los Angeles matron we first meet in 1998, burying her only sister in a local cemetery. After the service, Maria reconnects with an old friend and fellow Austrian, émigré Barbara Schoenberg (Frances Fisher), the daughter-in-law of the great composer Arnold Schoenberg.

It turns out that Maria is in need of a lawyer she can trust, and Barbara's son Randol, a.k.a. Randy, the composer's grandson, is a struggling local lawyer in desperate need of a significant case. It sounds like a match made in heaven except that for quite some time it's anything but.

One of the things that makes this a story of interest is that, even though its ending was a glorious one, not only was its outcome uncertain for years but also its two main participants were not always eager to collaborate.

For one thing, Maria, interested in the return of five Klimt paintings, including the "Adele" portrait, that the Nazis seized from her family, is looking for an expert in art restitution, an area Randy (a game but overmatched Ryan Reynolds) knows nothing about.

Randy, for his part, is just starting a new job (Charles Dance is his no-nonsense boss) and a family (Katie Holmes is the standard-issue, mostly understanding wife), and has no time for a wild goose chase, especially in the company of a woman whose manner he clearly finds off-putting.

Audiences, however, will likely feel otherwise about Maria Altmann. Though this kind of bossy performance can be viewed as falling off a log for Mirren, the actress expertly creates Maria's Mittel-European hauteur and leavens it with enough humanity to give the film an integrity it definitely needs.

Not that director Simon Curtis and screenwriter Alexi Kaye Campbell don't try hard (maybe too hard) for significance and heft. There are several German-language flashbacks to the family's time in Vienna, most effectively to the days when Maria was a child (Tatiana Maslany) and the favorite niece of her aunt Adele (Antje Traue.)

Once the Nazis come to power in Austria, however, the scenes of storm-trooper depredation can't avoid a standard-issue feeling and remind us that Curtis' earlier "My Week With Marilyn" felt similarly pro forma despite another strong lead performance, in this case from Oscar-nominated Michelle Williams.

Back in the present, Randy finally gets interested in the case, initially because he spies a potential payday. Despite the general feeling that paintings that get to be refrigerator magnets do not often leave their home countries, he persuades Maria to come back to Vienna with him and pursue the case.

Things get increasingly complex legally from here on in, with everything from an appearance by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist (Jonathan Pryce) to discussions of the relevance of the little-known Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act figuring in the mix.

Even without including speculation about a possible Klimt/Adele relationship or acknowledging the controversy around how Adele and family eventually disposed of the paintings, there is enough incident here to support a film. You just wish "Woman in Gold" was a better one.

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The titular character in Woman in Gold is Adele Bloch-Bauer, whose husband, Czech sugar mogul Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, commissioned Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt, to paint two portraits of his wife when she was 25 years old. The first and most famous of the two later became known as “Woman in Gold.” The film focuses on Bloch-Bauer's niece Maria Altmann, played by Helen Mirren, and her quest to reclaim the famous Klimt painting from the Austrian government, but there is a lot more to her story.

A Charmed Childhood

Maria Viktoria Bloch-Bauer was born to Gustav Bloch-Bauer and Therese Bauer on February 18, 1916, in Vienna, Austria. Her wealthy Jewish family, including her uncle Ferdinand and aunt Adele, were close to the artists of the Vienna Secession movement, which Klimt helped establish in 1897. The avant-garde of the Austrian capital included the composer Arnold Schoenberg. (The lawyer who handled Altmann's case was E Randol Schoenberg, the composer's grandson. Ryan Reynolds portrays him in the film.)

Although Altmann was not old enough at the time to remember Klimt's visits, she grew up visiting her uncle and aunt's grand house, which was filled with pictures, tapestries, elegant furniture and a collection of fine porcelain. Adele would often hold court for musicians, artists and writers in the salon of her huge house on Elisabethstrasse near the Wiener Staatsoper (the Vienna State Opera house).

However, the world came to know Adele as Klimt had painted her in 1907. He depicted her in a swirling gown within a blaze of gold rectangles, spirals and Egyptian symbols—she became the epitome of Vienna's Golden Age. In 1925, Adele died of meningitis at the age of 44. Afterward, Altmann recalled that the family’s regular Sunday brunches at her uncle’s house always included a viewing of the portrait, as well as four other works by Klimt, including another later painting of Adele.

Robbed of Everything

Altmann was left with only memories of the paintings, as they were stolen when the Nazis took Austria over in 1938. She had just married opera singer Fritz Altmann and her uncle had given her Adele's diamond earrings and a necklace as a wedding present. But the Nazis stole them from her—the stunning necklace she wore on her wedding day was sent to Nazi leader Hermann Göring as a present for his wife. Her father Gustav was most devastated when his prized Stradivarius cello was taken from him. Maria recalled: “My father died two weeks after that. He died of a broken heart.” Of course, the Nazis also seized Ferdinand's entire art collection, his porcelain collection and his sugar refinery. “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I” became known as “Woman in Gold,” as well as a symbol of all that the family had lost.

Forced to Flee

The Nazis held Fredrick Altmann at Dachau concentration camp to pressure his brother, Bernhard Altmann, to allow them to take over his booming textile factory. Having already fled to London, Bernhard signed over his factory to the Nazis and Fredrick was released. The couple then lived under house arrest until Maria managed to elude the guards by claiming that her husband needed a dentist. The two boarded a plane to Cologne and made their way to the Dutch border, where a peasant guided them across a brook, under barbed wire and into the Netherlands. Fredrick and Maria then fled to America and ultimately settled in California.

Living a New Life in America

While Frederick was working for aerospace firm Lockheed Martin in California, Bernhard had started a new textile factory in Liverpool, England. He sent Maria a cashmere sweater to see if Americans might like the fine, soft wool. Maria took the sweater to a department store in Beverly Hills, which agreed to sell them. Other stores across the country followed suit, and Maria eventually started opened her own clothing boutique. The couple had three sons and a daughter in America, building a life together in a country that welcomed them. Yet Maria never forgot what the Nazis stole from her family.

Fighting for & Winning Restitution

For many years, Maria supposed that the Klimt paintings had legitimately ended up in the Austrian National Gallery. But when she was 82, she learned from the tenacious Austrian investigative journalist Hubertus Czernin that the title to the paintings was hers, and she vowed to get them back. In 1999, she and her lawyer tried to sue the Austrian government. It had kept the paintings based on Adele’s will in which she made a “kind request,” that Ferdinand donate the paintings to the state museum after his death, which took place in 1945.

In so doing, it disregarded the fact that his own will had left his estate to his nieces and nephews. Yet the paintings hung in Vienna’s Austrian Gallery at Belvedere Palace with a placard inscribed: "Adele Bloch-Bauer 1907, bequeathed by Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer." When Maria arrived there, she defied the security guards to be photographed beside her Aunt Adele, saying loudly: “That painting belongs to me.”

For many years, Maria fought the Austrian government with great zest. “They will delay, delay, delay, hoping I will die,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 2001, with no end in sight to her case. “But I will do them the pleasure of staying alive.”

She did and she triumphed. After the paintings arrived in the United States, she told The New York Times: “You know, in Austria they asked, ‘Would you loan them to us again?’ And I said: ‘We loaned them for 68 years. Enough loans.’ ”

Maria and her lawyer had argued as far as the Supreme Court that the case should be heard in America and they won. However, in 2004, they went to independent arbitration where three Austrian academics decided that the paintings should be returned. In 2006, the paintings arrived with fanfare in Los Angeles. At the time, it was the largest single return, in monetary terms, of Nazi-looted art.

On View in Manhattan

Maria said her Aunt Adele had always wanted her golden portrait in a public gallery. Ronald Lauder, a businessman and philanthropist who had loved Adele's face from boyhood, happily paid $135 million to enshrine her in his Neue Galerie in Manhattan. At the time, it was the largest sum ever paid for a painting. The painting is currently part of a new exhibition at the Neue Galerie, opening on April 2, which was created in conjunction with the Woman in Gold movie.

Altmann died on February 7, 2011 in Los Angeles. She is survived by her sons, Charles, James and Peter, a daughter, Margie, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

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She was the Mona Lisa of Austria – her mysterious beauty enthralled everyone who saw her. For years, she was simply called the Woman in Gold – her portrait seen as testament to the genius of the artist, Gustav Klimt. As for the woman herself, she was assumed to be his lover: her inscrutable expression hinted at love, or perhaps a jaded weariness of the society world which she inhabited. This nameless beauty watched over us as we speculated about her life and loves, until the mystery behind her identity – and the darker secrets surrounding her fate – were revealed.

When I first saw this painting in Austria, I was fascinated by her- even though she was resplendent in gold, like a religious idol, you could tell she was a woman the artist knew well – not a saint of legend. Her pose, her finery, and her gaze at the viewer showed that she was a wealthy woman who knew who she was – and if you knew her, you’d likely not forget her.

But even if there were postcards of her everywhere in Vienna, her very existence was evidence of a crime.

Adele Bloch-Bauer’s Charmed Life

Adele Bloch-Bauer lived in Vienna in a very gilded age – her father was a banker, and she had married a sugar baron. (All those fabulous Viennese pastries? Sugar was a booming business at the turn of the 20th century.) She was wealthy, beautiful, and part of an intelligensia connected to artists, musicians, poets and writers. Not a bad life, right?

But there were a few problems: Adele could not have children, in a time when women were identified by their families. And even though the her family were “society”, they were also Jewish, and there was still Anti-Semitism in Austria, so their “society” was the “second society” of meritocracy, wealth, and charitable and cultural patronage. Sharing an apartment with her sister’s family (the two husbands were brothers) could keep her from being left alone without children while her husband was busy working.

Because the Bloch-Bauers were patrons of art and artists, they were far too wealthy and cultured to worry about the rantings of the occasional Anti-Semitic politician. So when Adele’s husband Ferdinand decided she should have her portrait painted by Gustav Klimt, you could imagine that their biggest worry was how beautiful she would look to posterity.

Gustav Klimt’s Ravishing Art

Gustav Klimt was from a background as different from the Bloch-Bauers’ as could be imagined in Vienna at the time. Born the second of seven children to a gold engraver father and a musical mother, he grew up poor, with only his prodigious drawing talent to see him through rough circumstances. He studied architectural painting, and excelled early on at painting murals in buildings. But his personal life was difficult – both his brother and his father died in quick succession, and Gustav became responsible for supporting both families through his work.

He also began shifting his artistic vision, abandoning his popular classicism and moving towards a more personal, revelatory style. He was a founder of the Viennese Secession – a group of young artists seeking to create and promote unconventional art. His new works shocked his old patrons – murals he had painted for the ceiling of the University of Vienna were called pornographic! And they were more blatantly erotic than anything seen in Vienna (in public, at least.)

Klimt was also quite an erotic figure himself – he was, by all accounts, something of a burly man – his working-class physique attracted a lot of women. And he was happy to oblige, even though it got him into lots of trouble – it is said that he fathered at least fourteen children out of wedlock. He made countless drawings of naked women pleasuring themselves – which only added to the speculation surrounding him.

But as hedonistic as he was, Klimt was first and foremost an excellent painter. So no matter what he did in his personal life – and how much he shocked with his unconventional art – he was due for a comeback.

Artist and Muse

No one knows what may have happened between Adele Bloch-Bauer and Gustav Klimt during their friendship, but the process of painting her portrait was a long one. And it may have begun before it was officially commissioned. In 1901, Klimt painted this:

This is Judith, the Biblical heroine who prevented Holofernes from destroying her city by using her charms to get him drunk and then decapitating him. The beauty and violence of this heroine make her a favorite of artists – but Klimt included details that had people talking. The face of this woman was a modern face – and it looked a lot like Adele Bloch-Bauer. Judith is also wearing an exquisite and distinctive choker. And Klimt’s Judith has a sensuality about her – she’s basically caressing the hair of her conquest, and looking through us with a gaze of ecstasy.

While they were friends already, it wouldn’t be until 1903 that Ferdinand would commission Klimt to paint his wife’s portrait, so these are telling details. But whether the likeness in the painting was evidence of an affair – or an inspiration by a dear and fascinating friend – the friendship between the Bloch-Bauers and Klimt continued.

Adele’s Golden Portrait

Klimt was also maturing into a style that was both satisfying to him and to his patrons. He had traveled to Ravenna, Italy, where he had seen the Byzantine mosaics in the Basilica of San Vitale, which is assumed to be inspiration for his new practice of incorporating gold leaf and mosaic patterning into his paintings. Among the scenes in the Basilica is this portrait of the Byzantine Empress Theodora:

When finished – it took three years – Klimt’s portrait of Adele was astonishing: she was resplendent in gold, an Empress of society. The eyes and egg motifs in her gown hint at an eroticism – and possibly that affair – while her pose is somewhere between regal and coquettish. We can’t tell. But whatever its intimations, it was beautiful enough that the Bloch-Bauers allowed it to be publicly exhibited as early as a few years after it was painted. But it spent most of its time in their apartment.

Klimt painted a second (or third?) portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer in a more modern style, which was also hung in the family’s home. Unfortunately, Adele didn’t live to old age – she died at 42 years old from meningitis, in 1925. But her story continued far beyond what she could have imagined.

The Lady Vanishes

While the arts scene in Vienna was reinventing itself, there was a concurrent reigning in of political power. Anti-Semitic politicians were gaining audiences, and conservative Austrians were shocked at the liberties their more culturally adventurous counterparts were taking. By the time Austria was taken over by Hitler (who had been rejected by the same art school Klimt had excelled in), there was a general atmosphere that control was needed. In short order, simply being Jewish was a crime.

Jewish families were harassed and placed under house arrest – wealthy Jews had their homes ransacked. All of the Bloch-Bauers’ art and fineries were brazenly stolen from them by Nazi officials. Adele’s nieces (and their husbands) were lucky – they escaped Austria and made it to America, where they could at least pick up the pieces of their lives.

And you would think that would be the end of the painting – but while Nazi taste in art was conservative, Adele’s portrait was so classically beautiful they knew they wanted to keep it. But they really couldn’t show a painting of a Jew, so they stripped it of Adele’s name, calling it Woman in Gold. This identity theft would have been complete, if it weren’t for a few pieces of paper.

Restitution

One of Adele Bloch-Bauer’s nieces, Maria Altmann, made a startling discovery after her sister died. Among her sister’s papers were a will from their uncle, stating that the paintings were to go to them. This would be a footnote to a tragic story, except that Austria was beginning to give stolen art and artifacts back to Jewish families who could prove that they were the rightful owners. Altmann, who had grown up seeing her Aunt’s portraits on the wall, hoped that maybe she could have her Aunt back with her. Or at least have the authorities admit that the paintings’ theft was an actual crime.

But the portrait was so central to Austrian identity – even if it was anonymous – that officials at the Belvedere fought back. Who wants to admit that they – or more likely at this point, their predecessors – were part of such heinous crimes? Who wants to give back things that they themselves did not steal? And wasn’t it in Adele’s will that the museum got the paintings anyway?

The whole thing became a huge battle, even going to the U.S. Supreme Court when officials in Austria blocked it. And there’s now a movie about it, starring Helen Mirren as Maria Altmann and Ryan Reynolds as her young attorney:

The movie received lukewarm reviews from critics, who probably didn’t appreciate the snappy banter between Altmann and her young lawyer, but I was touched by the movie’s portrayal of her charmed young life in Vienna. So many movies about the Nazis and their crimes focus on the violence and death they inflicted, but we see so little of the lives people had before they were stolen.

Spoiler alert – Maria Altmann won her case. That’s not really a spoiler – the painting was later sold to Ronald Lauder and is on permanent display in the Neue Galerie in New York, so we can visit the Lady Bloch-Bauer whenever we want. And the Neue Galerie is exhibiting a show on the painting’s story until September 7, 2015.

But the amazing thing is that Adele Bloch-Bauer had her name restored.Her painting lives on, with her own name reattached. After all the work that went into keeping her anonymous, she’s more famous than ever. But even with her biographical details, we still don’t know that much about her – she may be a temptress, an empress, or maybe just a little more modern than the time she lived in. That she survived being looted, renamed and fought over only adds to her allure. Even without the gold and mosaic elements, Adele Bloch-Bauer’s portrait transcends two dimensions: her beauty lives on in history as well as art, and while she doesn’t speak, we are still enthralled by her story.

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Maria Altmann was 88 when I first met her by phone in 2004. "Would it be possible to call back in a few minutes?" she asked. "I'm feeling a little dizzy and would like a cup of coffee to revive myself."

"Of course," I said, imagining Mrs. Altmann as a somewhat frail grandmother. Old she was, but frail she was not.

This week, Mrs. Altmann's amazing and triumphant story comes to the big screen in Woman in Gold, a film about one of the great legal battles in art history. The movie, starring Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds, begins with the Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938. Newlyweds Maria Altmann and her husband are wealthy Jews fleeing for their lives, leaving her family's famous artworks behind.

Against all odds more than a half century later, she fought her way to the U.S. Supreme Court in her quest to force the Austrian government to give back the painting of her aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, the Woman in Gold of the film title.

Painted by Gustav Klimt in 1907, the enormous, shimmering gold and oil on canvas was one of six Klimt paintings confiscated by the Nazis from the Bloch-Bauer home.

After the war, the works turned up in Austria's federal art museum, the Galerie Belvedere. The Austrian government said the paintings had been willed to the museum, a claim that would later be found to be fraudulent.

But even after the falsehood was finally exposed in 1998, it was a long road to getting the paintings back, especially the painting of Altmann's aunt, the Woman in Gold.

"Listen, she is the Mona Lisa of Austria," cautions an investigative journalist in the movie. "Do you think they will just let her go?"

The answer to that question was, "No." The Austrian government fought with everything it had to keep the painting, and Mrs. Altmann fought back with equal ferocity.

"I grew up with those paintings," Altmann recalled when I interviewed her in 2004.

She said the golden portrait of her aunt and five other Klimt paintings hung in her Aunt Adele and Uncle Ferdinand's palatial home throughout her childhood.

Her aunt, the subject of the portrait, was just 43 when she died in 1925. Thirteen years later, Ferdinand would flee Austria just before the Anschluss, the union with Hitler's Germany.

Everything was left behind and plundered by top Nazis such as Hermann Goering. Adele's diamond necklace, passed on to Maria Altmann upon her marriage, reportedly ended up decorating the neck of Goering's wife.

The Klimt paintings were seized, too, only to reappear after the war in the Galerie Belvedere.

It took more than a half century and the opening of government cultural archives to expose the real story.

"They're basing this on a lie," Altmann said in our 2004 interview. "These paintings are not theirs. These paintings belong to us."

It turned out Aunt Adele's will did not be

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