Rediscovered Klimt by ‘the wrong brother’

A MISSING Klimt painting that was rediscovered last week is by Ernst Klimt, not his more famous brother Gustav, an expert on the Austrian symbolist painter has declared, contradicting an art dealer who is preparing to sell it at auction.

Austria’s Kronen Zeitung had reported that an early work by the celebrated Gustav Klimt had been found in a garage, after languishing unrecognised for years since being removed from the building where the Klimt brothers had a 19th century studio.

Art dealer Josef Renz, who has just bought the painting from a family living near the Austrian city of Linz, said the ceiling painting of a trumpet-playing cherub might have been done by the two brothers together if not by Gustav Klimt alone.

But Alfred Weidinger, art historian, Klimt specialist, and curator of the Schlossmuseum Belvedere in Vienna, yesterday said he recognised the painting as an early, historicist work by Ernst Klimt, who died in 1892, 26 years before Gustav.

“It’s definitely not an important painting, even for Ernst Klimt,” said Mr Weidinger, noting that Ernst Klimt had died years before the Vienna Secession movement that rebelled against historicism.