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22-636: It contains the world's largest Egon Schiele Collection. The more than 5,000 exhibits collected by Elisabeth and Rudolf Leopold over five decades were consolidated in 1994 with the assistance of the Republic of Austria and the National Bank of Austria into the Leopold Museum Private Foundation. In 2001 the Leopold Museum was opened. The core of the collection consists of Austrian art of

44-532: A New York Times profile of Leopold described him as a "too passionate" collector, whose tough tactics had led him to keep Nazi looted art, including Schiele's Portrait of Wally , which had belonged to the Jewish art dealer Lea Bondi Jaray. After many dramatic court actions, a settlement was finally reached after Dr. Leopold's death. “Leopold knew the painting was stolen,” art lawyer Nicolas O’Donnell explained, “He had always known it. With his arrogance and pride out of

66-517: A Jewish cabaret artist and art collector, was murdered in the Holocaust, as was his wife. In 2012, following a public outcry, the museum's largest street posters for the Nackte Männer (English: Naked Men ) exhibition by Ilse Haider , displaying one of the exhibition's most prominent artworks, entitled Vive la France (a depiction of three naked French footballers, with their genitals fully revealed:

88-531: Is the representation of human and animal figures in connexion with appropriate landscapes and in characteristic situations so as to manifest nature as a living whole, and he particularly excels in depicting the free life of animals in wild mountain scenery. Along with great mastery of the technicalities of his art, his works exhibit patient and keen observation, free and correct handling of details, and bold and clear colouring. He died at Vienna on 7 July 1862. Many of his pictures have been engraved, and after his death

110-590: The Leopold Museum , of which he was made director for life. Claims had been made by Jewish survivors of the Holocaust that some of the pieces in the collection were Nazi plunder and should be returned to their rightful owners. Leopold was born on 1 March 1925 in Vienna, and said in interviews that he had escaped conscription by the Nazis by hiding in a small village in a remote part of Austria. He earned his medical degree from

132-544: The Medical University of Vienna . He started actively collecting art in the mid-1950s, with a major early focus being pieces by Egon Schiele , whose works were available inexpensively at the time. Other Austrian artists who he collected included Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka . The wonder he felt from seeing the art during a 1947 visit to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, a day he called "one of

154-682: The Museum of Modern Art drew attention because of the questioned provenance of two pieces included in the exhibit. Holland Cotter, in his review of the exhibition in The New York Times , noted that Schiele and his "X-rated subject matter" is rarely seen in U.S. museums. In December, 1997, Judith H. Dobrzynski wrote an investigative piece about Leopold's collecting, uncovering the connection between him and Lea Bondi Jaray , who owned " Portrait of Wally " before World War II, as well as other questionable purchases made by Leopold. Dobrzynski's article led

176-553: The Bondi family to write to MoMA requesting that it be held in New York. Dead City III was claimed by the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum , an artist who had been killed in 1941 at the Dachau concentration camp . Portrait of Wally , a painting of Walburga "Wally" Neuzil , was claimed by the family of Lea Bondi Jaray , a Jewish art dealer from Austria who had been forced to flee to London to escape

198-508: The French ambassador. His reputation was greatly increased by his picture The Storm , exhibited in 1829, and from that time his works were much sought after and obtained correspondingly high prices. His Field Labourer was regarded by many as the most noteworthy picture in the Vienna exhibition of 1834, and his numerous animal pieces have entitled him to a place in the first rank of painters of that class of subjects. The peculiarity of his pictures

220-455: The Nazis and that Leopold had reason to believe that the pieces had been Nazi loot. US v. Wally, 663 F. Supp. 2d 232 - Dist. Court, SD New York 2009 Friedrich Gauermann Friedrich Gauermann (10 September 1807 – 7 July 1862) was an Austrian painter. The son of the landscape painter Jacob Gauermann (1773–1843), he was born at Miesenbach near Gutenstein in Lower Austria . He

242-470: The Nazis. In January 1998, Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau served a subpoena on the Museum of Modern Art, demanding that the museum hold on to the two artworks in question and not return them to the Leopold Museum, a move that left many in the art world "shocked". Leopold insisted that he had not dealt in looted art, saying "I'm not a Nazi and I'm not a Nazi profiteer". While Dead City III

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264-481: The first black, the second Arab/Muslim and the third white, by the French artists Pierre et Gilles ), were amended by the artists themselves, by the addition of a red ribbon or stripe to cover the players' genitals. Rudolf Leopold Rudolf Leopold (1 March 1925 – 29 June 2010) was an Austrian art collector, whose collection of 5,000 works of art was purchased by the Government of Austria and used to create

286-605: The first half of the 20th century, including key paintings and drawings by Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, showing the gradual transformation from the Wiener Secession , the Art Nouveau / Jugendstil movement in Austria to Expressionism. The historical context is illustrated by major Austrian works of art from the 19th and 20th centuries. The Leopold Museum has been involved in numerous controversies concerning Nazi looted art. In 1997,

308-439: The most important days in my life", led Leopold to start a collection of his own. His first acquisition was a work by Friedrich Gauermann in 1947, which he paid for in exchange for tutoring. He acquired a catalogue of Schiele's work in 1950 and became enamored with the artist's work, despite the fact that he was distinctly out of fashion. Pieces that Rudolf bought for a few dollars would later be worth hundreds of thousands. He

330-530: The museum reached a settlement concerning five works by Schiele with the heirs of Karl Maylaender , who died after being deported to a labor camp during World War Two. In November 2023 the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum filed a lawsuit against the museum demanding the restitution of Schiele's Dead City III , Self-Portrait With Grimace (1910), Standing Man in Red Shawl (1913), Seated Girl With Yellow Cloth (1913) and Standing Girl With Orange Stockings (1914). Grünbaum,

352-516: The state. Leopold died at age 85 on 29 June 2010 in Vienna due to multiple organ failure . He was survived by his wife Elisabeth, as well as by a daughter, two sons and four grandchildren. Leopold was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class in 1997. Egon Schiele: The Leopold Collection , a 1997 exhibit of pieces he had collected that was shown in New York City at

374-632: The way, a real negotiation was possible.” In 2008, Austria's Green Party and the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde (IKG) publicly accused the museum of "holding art that was stolen by Nazis from Jewish owners" alleging that Houses on the Lake , 1914, by Egon Schiele, had been "stolen by the Nazis from Jewish owner Jenny Steiner ". In June 2011, the museum reached a settlement with the heirs of Moriz Eisler, an art collector and businessman concerning works by 19th-century Austrian artist Anton Romako. In 2016

396-482: The works of the chief masters in animal painting which were contained in the academy and court library of Vienna. In the summer he made art tours in the districts of Styria , Tirol , and Salzburg . Two animal pieces which he exhibited at the Vienna Exhibition of 1824 were regarded as remarkable productions for his years, and led to his receiving commissions in 1825 and 1826 from Prince Metternich and Caraman,

418-408: The works to be displayed at what was to become the Leopold Museum in Vienna, of which he was made director for life. The museum opened to the public in 2001. Leopold lived in the Vienna suburb of Grinzing in a modest home that he and his wife had lived in together for decades, which housed the many works of art that he continued to amass, even after the bulk of his collection had been purchased by

440-534: Was an early representative of the Veristic style devoted to nature in all its diversity. He was born in Scheuchenstein  [ de ] . It was the intention of his father that Gauermann should devote himself to agriculture, but the example of an elder brother, who, however, died early, fostered his inclination towards art. Under his father's direction he began studies in landscape, and he also diligently copied

462-495: Was especially noted for bringing public attention and appreciation to the work of Schiele, whose nude drawings had been considered pornographic at times. Leopold wrote the 1973 illustrated book Egon Schiele , which was published by Phaidon Press and included 228 of the artist's work along with selected poems. In 1994, the Austrian government agreed to purchase the collection for one-third of its appraised value of $ 500 million, with

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484-408: Was ultimately returned to the Leopold Museum, Portrait of Wally has been the subject of a protracted court battle in U.S. federal and state courts with heirs alleging that Leopold knew that the painting had been Nazi loot when he purchased it. A 2008 study of the works in the Leopold Museum, commissioned by a group of Austrian Jews, found that at least 11 pieces of art there had belonged to victims of

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