London, Feb. 13: The famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud may have had a painting by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler hanging on the wall of his office, it has been revealed. The painting, measuring eight inches by four inches, has an inscription on the back that
bears the name of Freud’s medical practice in Vienna.
Freud was based in the Austrian city in 1910, but it is possible he or one of his staff bought the picture from the struggling artist.
Richard Westwood-Brookes, from Mullock’s auctioneers, is selling the painting with a pre-sale estimate of up to £10,000. The possibility that this watercolour once hung on the walls of Freud’s consulting rooms in Vienna may seem on the face of it completely bizarre," the Telegraph of London quoted him as saying.
"But both men were in Vienna at the same time and we know Hitler was selling his paintings, so it is quite possible that Freud had one on the wall. We will never know for certain whether this was Freud’s, but it raises the tantalising prospect that the two men might have met," said Westwood-Brookes.
"The vendor is Italian and he said it came back from Vienna with an American GI after the Second World War. The GI said it had hung in Freud’s rooms. On the reverse are words in Italian that say ‘Sigmund Freud’s Medical Study, Vienna’. It looks as if it has come from a sketch book. The scene in the painting is typical of that which Hitler was painting at the time. He would paint postcards and also go around people’s houses and ask them if they wanted a watercolour of their property. It is known that Hitler was popular amongst Vienna’s Jewish community, he said. —ANI