23 January 2022

How an investigative art research brought a drawing from the Albertina to the Jewish Museum Vienna

The recently published story is playing in the Albertina and the Jewish Museum Vienna and goes over several chapters of investigative art research. It reads like a criminalistic investigation into a case from 1939 when Adella Feuer had to sell a pencil drawing to the Albertina Museum as she wasn't allowed to take it with her on her escape from Vienna. The biography of Adelle Feuer tells about a dramatic getaway, Auschwitz, and the emigration to the USA.

The investigative art research concerns the owner and her family, her nephew and niece who had to be found, as well as the artwork itself. Until today, it's not definitely known who the artist and the portrayed person are. Over a fashion detail, the portrait was dated to the early 1820s. The style of the pencil drawing shows similarities to works of artists who formed once as art students the circle Lukasbund and especially the portrait art of a representative of Viennese Romanticism with links to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

Image: The picture shows Klaus Albrecht Schröder, Director of the Albertina and Danielle Spera, Director of the Jewish Museum Wien with the pencil drawing (Vienna, 1820s) which was donated by Adelle Feuer's niece Sylvia Taubman to the Jewish Museum Vienna. The artwork had been owned by the Albertina since 1939 and was recommended for restitution in 2013. In 2020, the heirs of Adelle Feuer were located. Photo: © Ouriel Morgensztern.

"Since the Art Restitution Act was enacted in December 1998, the Art Restitution Advisory Board has passed resolutions on the return of almost 4,000 objects from the ALBERTINA in 46 cases," is the Director of the Albertina Klaus Albrecht Schröder cited in the press release where more information about the owner, the artwork, and the process of the restitution is published (jmw.at).