The miniature Vienna would not let leave

Albert Theer painted Carl Graf Gleispach, a lieutenant in the Austrian Empire’s army, in 1847. The watercolor, about three by two inches, later belonged to Eduard Epstein, a Jewish textile merchant and collector in Vienna. After Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the authorities liquidated his business and the Gestapo searched his home. He was imprisoned for nearly a year following an attempt to move assets out of the country.

In 1940 Epstein sought permission to export the art he still held. Most of it was cleared, but the miniature stayed in Vienna. The Museum of Military History’s register records its purchase for 100 Reichsmarks on 12 April 1940. The purchase file was missing. Researchers compared the register entry with residence and asset records to distinguish the collector from other men of the same name. In 2013 Austria’s advisory board recommended restitution.

Austria delivered the miniature to Epstein’s great-niece and heir Jacqueline Sondell in Minnesota in August 2026. Sondell then lent it to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, which put it on view in November. That exhibition is a family loan after restitution. It follows a museum purchase recorded in Vienna under the conditions of Nazi persecution.