According to an article in The New York Times, France will return the only painting by Gustav Klimt in its national collection to the heirs of Nora Stiasny, a Jewish woman who sold it under duress after the Nazis annexed Austria.

France’s culture minister, Roselyne Bachelot, said it was difficult but necessary for France to part with Klimt’s “Rosebushes Under the Trees,” which she called “a masterpiece.”

Stiasny was born in 1898 to a Jewish family in Vienna. The painting was passed on to her by her uncle, Viktor Zuckerkandl, a wealthy steel magnate and art collector who had bought the painting in 1911. After the Nazis annexed Austria, she was forced to sell it to survive. Stiasny was deported to occupied Poland in 1942 and died that year, as did her husband and son. 

The man who bought the painting kept it until his death in 1960. France bought it from an art gallery in 1980, having found no evidence at the time that it had been sold under duress.

In 2019, a task force was given a broad mandate to search for and return artwork that had been looted or sold under duress during the Nazi occupation. The Louvre is currently reviewing all acquisitions it made between 1933 and 1945.