The Refused Kiss
From the Whatifs Catalogue, the encyclopedia of paintings that never were. Lot of the day on Oct 15.
Created with AI, after Gustav Klimt, public domain.
The Refused Kiss is an imagined painting attributed, within the Whatifs fiction, to Gustav Klimt (1909). It belongs to the Whatifs series of works the great masters never painted.
History and rediscovery
Sketched the same year as The Kiss, this painting shows the woman turning her face away. Klimt reportedly found it too cruel and gave it to Emilie Flöge. Seized in 1938, it reappeared in 2024 at a Buenos Aires dealer's, was restituted to the heirs, who put it up for sale.
Sale
Within the fiction, the painting sold for $212,000,000 (2025). Tap the board above to replay the imagined bidding. The auction pictured below never took place.
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See also
- The Old Port of Marseille, Vincent van Gogh
- The Painter from Behind, Without a Model, Johannes Vermeer
- Judith, the Morning After, Artemisia Gentileschi
Notes
- Image generated with AI from a prompt written by Whatifs. No real painting, signature or auction house is reproduced.
- Story written for Whatifs. Any resemblance to real discoveries is coincidental.
