THE FACE THAT LAUNCHED A THOUSAND LAWSUITS
Wally Neuzil was Egon Schiele’s favorite model and true love until the time of his marriage, to another woman, in 1915. Now Wally is the subject of an exhibition at Vienna’s Leopold Museum. The star of the show is Portrait of Wally, a painting looted by the Nazis that was subject to prolonged litigation in the United States. In 2010, the Leopold Museum paid the original owner’s family $19 million to get the work back. The Wally case set precedents all over the world, prompting Austria to rewrite its restitution laws and unleashing a flood of similar lawsuits. But while the Leopold Museum is celebrating Wally as a person, the museum is making no mention of her portrait’s troubled past.