Gustav Klimt's 'Lost' Painting Auctions for €30 Million

A painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, thought to be lost for the past century, has been auctioned off in Vienna.

The art work was commissioned a year before Klimt's death, by a family of Jewish industrialists in 1917.

The unfinished work, Portrait of Fraulein Lieser, fetched €30m (£26m; $32m).

The painting raises numerous unanswered questions and sparks debates regarding the identity of the woman portrayed and the painting's whereabouts during the Nazi era. 

It's thought to depict one of the daughters of Adolf or Justus Lieser, siblings from a prosperous Jewish industrialist family.

"What is known is that it was acquired by a legal predecessor of the consignor in the 1960s and went to the current owner through three successive inheritances."

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

The painting was sold representing the owners and the rightful heirs of Adolf and Henriette Lieser, following the Washington Principles—a global pact aimed at restoring Nazi-looted art to the descendants of its original owners.

Ernst Ploil from im Kinsky noted that "We have an an agreement, according to the Washington principles, with the whole family".

The im Kinsky catalogue described this agreement as "a fair and just solution".

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

She has called for the case to be researched by "an independent party".

"Art restitution is a very sensitive issue, all research must be carried out accurately and in detail, and the result must be comprehensible and transparent," Ms Jakubovits said.

"It must be ensured that there is also a state-of-the-art procedure for future private restitutions."

Klimt's art has fetched huge sums at auction in the past.