A painting, considered lost for the last 100 years, is being auctioned with a huge price PHOTO

A painting by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, considered lost for the last 100 years, will be auctioned in Vienna, the BBC reports.

There are many unanswered questions regarding the unfinished painting, Portrait of Fraulein Lieser, which Klimt began in 1917, a year before his death.

There is also debate as to who the woman in the painting is and what happened to the painting during the Nazi period.

The value of the painting is estimated at 50 million euros, although it could reach a higher price.

The painting is believed to represent one of the daughters of Adolf or Justus Lieser, who were siblings from a wealthy family of Jewish industrialists.

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Art historians Thomas Natter and Alfred Weidinger say the painting represents Margarethe Constance Lieser, Adolf Lieser’s daughter, but Vienna’s im Kinsky auction house, which is auctioning the artwork, suggests the painting could also represent one of two daughters of Justus Lieser and his wife Henriette.

Henriette, known as Lilly, was a patron of modern art. She was deported by the Nazis and died in the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust.

Her daughters, Helene and Annie, survived World War II.

The auction house said in a statement that the exact fate of the painting after 1925 is “unclear”.

“What is known is that it was purchased by a legal predecessor of the consignor in the 1960s and came to the current owner through three successive inheritances,” the auction house reports.

The identity of the current Austrian owners has not been made public.

The painting is being sold on behalf of these owners and the legal heirs of Adolf and Henriette Lieser, based on the Washington Principles – an international agreement to return works of art looted by the Nazis to the descendants of the people from whom the pieces were taken.

Im Kinsky’s Ernst Ploil told the BBC: “We have an agreement, in accordance with the Washington principles, with the whole family.”

Catalog im Kinsky described this agreement as “a fair and equitable solution”.

However, Erika Jakubovits, executive director of the Austrian Jewish Community Presidency, said there were still “many unanswered questions”.

She asked that this case be investigated by “an independent party”.

“The restitution of works of art is a very sensitive matter, all research must be carried out accurately and in detail, and the result must be intelligible and transparent,” said Jakubovits.

“They must also ensure that there is a state-of-the-art procedure for future private returns,” she added.

In the past, Klimt’s artworks fetched huge sums at auction.

His piece “Lady with a Fan” sold for £85.3 million at Sotheby’s in June 2023, making it the most valuable work of art ever sold at auction in Europe.