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London (dpa) - A "lost masterpiece" by Austrian expressionist painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918) rediscovered almost 70 years after it was confiscated by the Nazis was unveiled by Christie's in London Friday.
The sombre 1914 painting entitled Wilted Sunflowers is expected to fetch between 4 and 6 million pounds (between 7 and 10 million dollars) when it comes to auction on June 20, Christie's said.
Schiele's own title for the work, Autumn Sun 1914 (Herbstsonne 1914), is written on the back of the painting which, according to Christie's, is in remarkably good condition.
"It is untouched by restoration and, though 90 years old, in original condition," said Christie's Europe-director Jussi Pylkkanen Friday.
The auction house "very much hoped" that the masterpiece, last seen in public at a 1937 exhibition in Paris, would find a new home in one of the world's leading museums.
The melancholy depiction of wilting sunflowers indicated Schiele's "gloomy foreboding" of the outbreak of World War I later that year.
The watercolour and oil canvas was bought by an Austrian art, textiles and antiques dealer, Karl Gruenwald, who fled Vienna for Paris when Hitler annexed Austria in 1938.
In 1942, the collection was auctioned by the Nazi regime.
Gruenwald's son, Frederic, took up the search after his father's death.
"He said to us, don't forget the Sunflowers," Frederic's daughter, Cory Pollack, said at Christie's Friday.
Christie's received a phone call from a man in France last autumn, asking for a routine valuation. The painting was returned to the heirs of Gruenwald in February this year.
"Our family is absolutely thrilled with the resolution of this situation. So many bad things happened during the war and this is a wonderful thing as part of a healing process," said Pollack, who lives in the US.
Copyright 2006 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
