Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona

In 1897 Vienna, the same year Klimt broke with the art establishment to found the Secession, a zoo in the city put on one of the ethnographic shows then common across Europe, displaying people brought from the Gold Coast, in what is now Ghana. Klimt went, and so did his old colleague Franz Matsch, and both painted this man, a prince of the Ga people named William Nii Nortey Dowuona. Klimt set his sitter against loose, flowery brushwork and, tellingly, never signed the canvas, which suggests the patron preferred Matsch's version. The painting then vanished for decades after the Second World War. It surfaced again in 2023, grimy and in a poor frame, was cleaned and authenticated, and went back on public view in 2025.