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The Leopold Museum of Vienna's prized Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890-1918) painting Portrait of Wally, 1912. Image source: The Yorck Project.

Austria museum to sell Schiele painting to pay for ‘Wally’

Catherine Saunders-Watson
Catherine Saunders-Watson
The Leopold Museum of Vienna's prized Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890-1918) painting Portrait of Wally, 1912. Image source: The Yorck Project.
The Leopold Museum of Vienna’s prized Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890-1918) painting Portrait of Wally, 1912. Image source: The Yorck Project.

VIENNA (AFP) – The Leopold Museum in Vienna said Thursday it would sell a key painting by Austrian painter Egon Schiele to help finance last year’s acquisition of the Portrait of Wally by the same artist.

The museum said in a statement it planned to put up for auction at Sotheby’s in London next month Schiele’s 1914 canvas entitled House with coloured linen. The Leopold Museum put the painting’s estimated value at 30 million euros ($44.5 million), but said it could sell for even higher and perhaps achieve a record for Schiele’s works at auction.

Sotheby’s said it viewed the picture as “one of Schiele’s most important works” and valued it at $36-50 million (24-33 million euros).

The museum will use the proceeds to pay for “Wally,” which it managed to buy last year for $19 million after years of legal wrangling with the family of the painting’s previous Jewish owner.

In 2006, a landscape by Schiele went for a record $22.4 million. Schiele (1890-1918) was one of Austria’s major expressionist painters, alongside Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka.

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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

The Leopold Museum of Vienna's prized Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890-1918) painting Portrait of Wally, 1912. Image source: The Yorck Project.
The Leopold Museum of Vienna’s prized Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890-1918) painting Portrait of Wally, 1912. Image source: The Yorck Project.