"Le premier jour de printemps à Moret", by Alfred Sisley--Part Two

by Marc Masurovsky

“Frühlingslandschaft”

The Impressionist painter, Alfred Sisley, produced “Le premier jour de printemps à Moret” in 1889, an oil on canvas measuring 46,2 x 56 cm, signed and dated “Sisley. 89” on the lower left of the painting. The first name which appears on the provenance of the painting in the Christie’s sale listing for November 6, 2008, is “Camentron” with no date of acquisition.  There was a “Galerie Martin Camentron” in Paris in the 1890s which acquired a number of Sisley paintings. There was also a “collection Camentron” in which one could find a number of paintings by Sisley. 

The famed “Galerie Durand-Ruel” acquired “Le premier jour de printemps à Moret” in 1892 from Camentron, one of several that the gallery acquired, as attested by the provenance of a Sisley painting at the Musée d’Orsay.

Thirty years elapsed before Mr. Perdoux allegedly acquired the Sisley painting. There is nothing to indicate that he bought it from Durand-Ruel. This could be the same Perdoux as Yves Perdoux, a notorious Parisian art dealer who collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation of France and denounced the locations of a number of Jewish-owned art collections, including that of Paul Rosenberg.

The Lindon family name does not appear in the Christie's provenance of this painting. At some point, the Wildenstein gallery in Paris came into possession of the painting. If one did not know that Lindon was associated with the Sisley painting, it would be impossible to deduce exactly when Wildenstein bought the painting—before, during or after WWII. On or about 1972, “the present owner” of the painting purchased “Le premier jour de printemps à Moret” and brought it to market at Christie’s on November 6, 2008 where Alain Dreyfus acquired it for 338,500 dollars.

So, what happened between Perdoux and Wildenstein?

The theft

Months after the German invasion of France in June 1940, the Lindenbaum/Lindon collection was confiscated and sent to the Jeu de Paume on December 10, 1940.   It included five paintings by Sisley which had been stored in a vault at the Chase Safe Deposit Company at 41, rue Cambon in Paris, until their removal by the German financial police agents with the Devisenschutzkommando (DSK) on December 5, 1940. The inventory drawn up by the DSK agents indicated a painting by Sisley 

excerpt from the DSK inventory

entitled “Frühling in Moret”. The initial inventory drawn up when the Lindenbaum collection first entered the Jeu de Paume in December 1940 showed a painting by Sisley with the following title: “Frühlingslandschaft mit blühenden Ostbäumen”, with a lower left signature and the date “89”. 

The ERR personnel at the Jeu de Paume gave the Sisley painting the title of “Frühlingslandschaft” (Spring landscape) and the number "Li 56"; it described the painting as a “View into a meadow landscape with still bare fruit trees, poplars and bushes. In the background a human figure”.

ERR card for Li 56

In early January 1943, a new inventory of the Lindenbaum collection was drawn up under the supervision of Dr. Schiedlausky, who was the principal manager of the ERR depot of Neuschwanstein in Bavaria near the town of Hohenschwangau close to Fussen. However a number of Impressionist and other modern works from the Lindenbaum collection remained at the Jeu de Paume in German-occupied Paris and were inventoried there on July 17, 1942 by Dr. Tomforde, one of the main art historians and cataloguers of confiscated collections working for the ERR in Paris. In May 1944, Dr. von Ingram working with Schiedlausky completed the Lindenbaum inventory at Neuschwanstein, including three Sisley paintings slated to be exchanged by the German dealer and agent, Gustav Rochlitz, on Goering’s initiative. Those paintings had been swapped in Paris for a painting by Titian, entitled “Portrait of a young lady” on July 9, 1941. Li 56, “Frühlingslandschaft” remained with Gustav Rochlitz who shipped it to his storage facility in Mühlhofen near Meersburg in southern Bavaria along the shores of Lake Constanz. A handwritten note from a postwar Bavarian official confirmed this possibility.

On September 25, 1945, Alfred Lindon submitted a “final list” of works of art plundered from the vault he had rented at the Chase Safe Deposit Company at 41, rue Cambon before the Germans’ arrival in the French capital. Incidentally, he named the Sisley painting “Sous-bois/printemps rose” and Mr. Lindon indicated that it had been acquired at Durand-Ruel.  Hence, when filling out the provenance advertised by Christie’s in November 2008, one could postulate the following:

Camentron, Paris
Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired from the above in April 1892)
Alfred Lindon?

Where does that put Mr. Perdoux (acquired from the above, November 1923)?

Could the 1923 Perdoux reference be a falsehood? If, as Mr. Lindon indicates on his inventory of works lost as a result of looting of the family vault at Chase Safe Deposit Company, he had bought the Sisley from Durand-Ruel, this would throw into question the mention of Perdoux in the provenance supplied to Christie’s. This would not be the first time that a provenance contained fictitious or misleading information. One possibility is that Alfred Lindon acquired the Sisley painting in November 1923 and that Yves Perdoux, if it is him, may have been involved in the recycling of the painting during WWII. He worked with various collaborationist art dealers, in particular Raphael Gérard, to whom he had sold numerous looted objects between 1940 and 1944. Anything is possible…

As a result of an exchange policy approved by the ERR and Hermann Goering, modern paintings confiscated from Jewish collectors were offered to French, Swiss, Belgian, Dutch, Italian, and German art dealers in exchange for Old Masters which could grace the collections of Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering. Under exchange (Tausch) No. 10 of July 9, 1941, a number of Lindenbaum paintings, including the Sisley painting in question were offered to Gustav Rochlitz in exchange for a Titian painting. According to Rochlitz’s testimony to the Allies after WWII, he shipped the Sisley and many other paintings he had obtained on the Paris art market, to a storage place that he managed at Mühlhofen near Meesburg in southern Bavaria, along the northern shore of Lake Constanz. Rochlitz misrepresented many of his transactions to Allied interrogators. Therefore, it would not be surprising if the Sisley in question had remained in Paris and been sold or consigned for sale with collaborationists like Yves Perdoux or Raphael Gérard.

In sum, the chain of ownership for the Sisley painting was broken on December 5, 1940. Its post-confiscation disappearance on the Paris art market made it impossible for French and Allied officials to recover the painting and return it to the Lindon family. Knowledge of these illicit market activities was not well-known in the postwar years, except by those who engaged in them, those who benefited from them, and some of the victims who investigated the fate of their lost cultural assets. 

The postwar French directory of looted cultural assets  known as Répertoire des biens spoliés (RBS) includes several paintings by Sisley which include the word “printemps” (spring/Frühling), one of the titles ascribed to the painting by Alfred Lindon, which point to two owners, the estate of Mrs. Berthe Propper and Mr. Lindon. A handwritten annotation in the 1947 RBS catalogue points to the fact that the French government’s investigative file on the whereabouts of the painting was closed on August 5, 1961, an administrative procedure indicating that the French government no longer considered the location of the painting as feasible. In these instances, government officials would tell claimants that they should accept instead a compensatory package from the German government for their losses, 16 years after the end of WWII. Whether or not the Lindon family continued to search for the painting is a question that needs an answer.

crossed-out mention of "Le Printemps" in RBS

Works by Alfred Sisley in lost art databases

www.lootedart.com

The database of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe (CLAE) includes three paintings by Sisley with the word “Spring”, none of which are ascribed to Alfred Lindon.

Lostart.de

The database of looted cultural assets which is managed by the German Lost Art Foundation contains 22 paintings by Alfred Sisley, none of which correspond to the Alfred Lindon painting.

Art Loss Register (ALR)

It’s impossible to know what information on the Sisley the London-based Art Loss Register holds since it is a proprietary database. In general, auction houses and art dealers routinely submit to ALR information on objects on consignment for sale in order to identify any potential problems with title. 

Tentative conclusion

Once Alfred Lindon became dispossessed of the painting on December 5, 1940, the painting became a looted work of art subject to restitution which required it to be returned to its rightful owner. Since it was not located at the end of WWII or thereafter, the painting’s postwar itinerary is illegal. Any transfer of title from one possessor  to the next since 1940 was illegal and amounted to resale and possession of stolen property.  Wildenstein & Cie, one-time owner of the Sisley painting, has contributed to the postwar problem surrounding this painting.

An art dealer's responsibility compels him/her to do systematic due diligence on every object which he/she acquires, sells, or borrows. It does not matter if the object is being offered for sale by an auction house or a gallery or a museum or another art dealer or a private individual. That is his/her professional and ethical responsibility. To treat auction houses differently from other market actors is frankly puzzling and illogical.

It is my frank opinion that if Mondex succeeds in bringing Christie's to heel over the Sisley painting, it will not only undermine one of the more successful restitution experiments in the private art market but also raise serious concerns about the actual meaning of restitution of works and objects of art plundered during the Nazi years by reducing it to a mercenary hunt for cash at whatever the cost. That, frankly, is unethical.  I honestly hope that all parties come to their senses and seek some other form of solution which will benefit the Lindon family, first and foremost.

Additional notes

Titles

“Le premier jour de printemps à Moret” by Alfred Sisley, painted in 1889, ended up in the possession of Alfred Lindenbaum/Lindon. The painting, before and after its racially-motivated confiscation, has had different titles prior to its purchase in 2008 by Alain Dreyfus:

“Printemps”
“Sous-bois/printemps rose”
“Frühlingslandschaft”
“Frühlingslandschaft mit blühenden Ostbäumen”
“Frühling in Moret”

Markings

Usually, the ERR staff wrote or stenciled on the back of works it confiscated, especially paintings, the alpha-numeric code that they assigned to the items they catalogued at the Jeu de Paume. Those markings would have been the obvious tip-off that the painting had been stolen during the German occupation of Paris. Was the painting restretched, reframed? Were the markings erased?  If so, who would have stripped the painting down of obvious markings left by the ERR?

Sources:

Bundesarchiv, B323/277 Koblenz, Germany

209SUP 2, 209SUP 603, French Foreign Affairs Ministry Archives, La Courneuve, France

RG 260 M1943 Reel 12, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD

"Premier jour de printemps à Moret" by Alfred Sisley--Part One

by Marc Masurovsky

Premier jour de printemps à Moret, by Alfed Sisley
courtesy of Le Monde

On May 25, 2018, a story broke in “L’Alsace”, a regional French newspaper, regarding a notable from Mulhouse, Alain Dreyfus, well-known art dealer and collector who plies his trade across the border in Basel, Switzerland.  According to the Alsatian newspaper, Mr. Dreyfus is all up in arms over a painting by Alfred Sisley, “Premier jour de printemps à Moret,” which the Impressionist artist produced in 1889. Dreyfus acquired it at Christie’s in New York on November 6, 2008, without giving it much thought since, in his own words, “when you go to an auction sale, you don’t check anything because you assume that everything has been checked.” So much for due diligence.

At some point in 2016, according to Mr. Dreyfus as reported in “L’Alsace”, a Toronto-based company, Mondex, contacted him to let him know that the Sisley in question was a looted painting which had once belonged to a French Jewish family by the name of Lindenbaum or Lindon, and that the Nazis had stolen the painting during the German occupation of France. Although dismayed at the news, he informed the Canadians that he would restitute the painting as long as Christie’s reimbursed him for the money spent in 2008 at the New York sale. Through his lawyers, Dreyfus laid out his position: either Christie’s indemnifies the family and he keeps the painting, or he restitutes the painting and Christie’s pays him back.

In 2017, one of the Lindon family heirs contacted Mr. Dreyfus by mail to confirm that he still had the painting. Then, he found out that the Lindon heir turned around and sued Christie’s. Meanwhile, the Swiss police has sequestered the painting until the issue is resolved. Dreyfus has since sent an invoice to the Christie’s office in Zurich for 700,000 euros, although he paid 338,500 dollars for the painting in 2008. His excuse for asking double the price of the painting? Christie’s allegedly pocketed 694 million euros from a recent Rockefeller sale. Hence, his bill represents  the equivalent of pocket change.  Mr. Dreyfus is clearly incensed and fuming, in a way that few art dealers are when faced with a restitution claim resulting from an auction sale.

According to a May 28, 2018, article which appeared in “Le Monde,” the main critique leveled at Christie’s is that it could not have ignored the looted history of the painting since it has an internal section focused on looted art. That critique was leveled by Denis Lindon, 91 year old grandson of the plundered victim, Alfred Lindon.

In a May 31, 2018, article, artnet.com quoted James Palmer of Mondex, who confirmed that the Sisley painting had been confiscated by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) “and passed through the hands of Hermann Goering.” As supporting evidence, a document produced by the ERR was reproduced in the artnet piece; that document came from the Database of Art objects that transited through the Jeu de Paume (better known as the ERR database). One might speculate that the information contained in that database validated Mondex’s claim of an act of plunder perpetrated against the Lindenbaum/Lindon family for the painting in question.  Incidentally, the ERR database was not publicly accessible in 2008. Hence, Christie’s could not have consulted it. The few art looting databases in existence at the time would have been short on specifics regarding the Lindon losses or were proprietary databases whose content is impossible to verify for accuracy and reliability.

Mr. Palmer stepped up his attack against Christie’s by stating that “buying from auction houses presents significant risks” going as far as asserting that the “auction house should indemnify” the buyer “if a claim is ever made in the future,” that is to say, if the evidence of theft escaped the research efforts of the auction house prior to sale.  In other words, the behavior of Mr. Dreyfus appears to echo the Mondex stance against Christie’s and, more generally, against all auction houses.

However, Nicholas O’Donnell, an art restitution attorney based in Boston, Massachusetts, countered that there was no indication of any suspicion regarding the painting on the face of the provenance that Christie’s was given for the Sisley work, a view that James Palmer, of Mondex, contests. According to a New York Times report dated June 3, 2018, Palmer notified Monica Dugot, director of restitution at Christie’s that a review of a “directory of looted items published in France in 1947” would have yielded several looted Sisley works with the word “spring” in their title.  The "directory" which Mr. Palmer has alluded to is the "Répertoire des biens spoliés” which can be downloaded from a French government website.

In sum, the fight over the Lindon Sisley painting has turned into an unfortunate mess with an auction house, Christie’s, caught between a determined “art recovery business”, Mondex, an incensed art dealer, Mr. Alain Dreyfus, and a claimant, Mr. Denis Lindon, all convinced that Christie’s did not exercise sufficient due diligence to identify a looted work of art belonging to the Lindon family.

The fact that all guns are pointed at Christie’s in a very complex game of who should have known what and when regarding the flawed ownership history of “Premier jour de printemps à Moret,” by Alfred Sisley, begs for clarification and a more sober examination of the facts.

As the old saw goes, “the facts, nothing but the facts.” In Part II, let’s take a look at the hard facts and ask another set of questions which might put this entire kerfuffle into perspective. Indeed, there is a looted painting that needs to be restituted to the Lindon family. But where did the problem originate and who stands to benefit from this international three-ring circus?

Three Impressionist paintings, three (or rather two) destinies

On March 1, 1941, the Paris art dealership of Durand-Ruel ships to its German client, Mr. Wolfgang Krüger, three high-priced paintings by noted French Impressionists:

1/ “Les Meules, le matin” by Claude Pissarro, painted in 1899

Les meules, le matin, Claude Pissarro
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

2/ “Promenade sous bois”, by Auguste Renoir, painted in 1910

Promenade, sous-bois, Auguste Renoir
Source: Culture France

3/ “Noyers, plaine de Veneux-Madon,” by Alfred Sisley.

Noyers, plaine de Veneux-Madon, Alfred Sisley
Source: Culture France

While in Paris during the German occupation of France, Mr. Krüger, a Berlin-based businessman and avid art collector, enjoyed his stays at the Hotel Saint-James & Albany. He paid 385,000 Francs for the three Impressionist works.

Fate would have it that the Pissarro painting ends up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, courtesy of a bequest in the name of an American scion and philanthropist, Douglas Dillon. The odd thing about the provenance of the Pissarro is the name of the person who ostensibly owned it prior to Durand-Ruel, to whom that person had sold it in early 1941. Funny time to sell Impressionist works of art. But, let’s not think the worst of this work. The Met should be innocent until proven otherwise. The name of that previous owner is Braunthed, who lived in Neuilly sur Seine, a very wealthy suburb of Paris, home, in the 1930s, to some of the wealthiest members of the Jewish community and especially to German Jewish refugees who had settled there after Hitler had come to power in Germany.
Until someone can clear up who “Braunthed” is, the mystery remains as to the circumstances under which “Braunthed” sold the Pissarro painting to Durand-Ruel eight months after the Nazis began to plunder Jewish collections in the Paris region. Moreover, no one has asked Durand-Ruel why it made it a habit of selling wonderful works of art to German industrialists, bankers, and aristocrats, during World War II. Perhaps, their client relationship dated back to the roaring twenties. Still, that's no excuse, is it?

The two other works suffered a less glamorous fate, despite the fact that they were purchased from Durand-Ruel by the same individual, Wolfgang Krüger, at the same time. Allied troops "captured" or "liberated" the one by Renoir and the other by Sisley, after the fall of the Third Reich.  Before being repatriated to France as of "unknown origin," they allegedly went through the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP).  At least, the Renoir painting--Promenade, sous-bois-- did, according to the French Ministry of Culture.  If so, there is no trace of it in the MCCP database produced by the Deutsches Historisches Museum (DHM) under the supervision of Angelika Enderlein.  The so-called Munich number--7519--does not correspond to a painting by Renoir, but rather to a work by Panini.  Back to square one. 

 "Promenade, sous-bois" ended up at the Renoir House (Maison Renoir) in Cagnes-sur-Mer as MNR 207 where it keeps company to another ill-fated MNR painting by Renoir, “la Femme au puits”, also known as MNR 579, while the Sisley adorns the walls of a municipal museum in the birthplace of the "damned poet" Arthur Rimbaud, Charleville-Mézières.  Why on earth did that small town receive the painting by Sisley? Political favor? Enriching local collections with stolen property? Who knows? In any event, the Sisley painting that once belonged to Mr. Krüger is now branded as MNR 209.

And so it goes.

Three paintings purchased from the same art dealership in Paris during Year Two (or Year 1.5, depending on how you count) of the Nazi occupation of France, ending up in two different nations, one ostensibly unfettered by the shackles of war while the two others remain in that purgatory called MNR. Why did the Pissarro not end up in the French Museum system as a MNR painting? According to the Metropolitan Museum's website, the first post-1945 owner of the Pissarro was Robert F. Woolworth, who then consigned the painting to the now-defunct Knoedler Gallery in New York.  Where did Mr. Woolworth obtain the Pissarro? From Mr. Wolfgang Krüger? or from yet someone else?

What made the Renoir and Sisley works fit that category despite the fact that they shared a common wartime fate? If anything, the Pissarro is far more suspect than the Renoir and the Sisley.

Mystery…

Illicit Art Trade 101: The Case of the Missing Marcos Paintings

On November 21, 2012, we learned that Imelda Marcos’ personal secretary, Ms. Vilma Bautista, was indicted in New York with two other individuals for selling Claude Monet’s “Le Bassin aux Nymphéas” to a London buyer for $32 million back in 2010 and for trying to sell three Impressionist works—L’Eglise et la Seine à Vétheuil, by Claude Monet (1881), “Le Cyprès de Djenan Sidi Said,” by Albert Marquet (1946) and “Langland Bay,” by Alfred Sisley (1887)— Ms. Bautista had obtained all four works under dubious circumstances from an apartment at 13-15 East 66th Street, in New York City controlled by the Marcos family and known as the “Philippine House”. The paintings remained concealed for two decades.

13-15 E. 66th Street, NY, NY
Source: Google

Imelda Marcos in 1982
Source: Google

According to the New York Times, Mrs. Marcos had acquired these paintings in the 1970s from an unspecified London art dealer and had brought them back to Manila before shipping them to New York in 1982.

This case should be sub-titled “Art Theft 101” or better still “Illicit Art Trade 101.”

Indeed, the premise is simple: an individual, Vilma Bautista, gains control under unclear circumstances of four (4) Impressionist paintings in the late 1980s. A decade goes by and, together with two other individuals, a plan is hatched to sell them. It dawns on at least one of the members of this alleged conspiracy that they do not have good title to the paintings. Hence, it would be a bit difficult to sell them on the open market since they would most likely be nabbed. First lesson: theft does not convey title. Ms. Bautista’s actions with the Marcos paintings are no different than what opportunistic individuals did during the Nazi years—somehow gained access to victims’ property, hid the stolen items, oftentimes for decades before releasing them for sale. The more well-known the items, the more likely they would have to be sold on the sly through a parallel market.

This is precisely what Ms. Bautista and her accomplices attempted to do.

First off, officialize title to the works. To do so, Bautista sought out a “notary.” That notary issued a so-called certificate of authority bearing the forged signature of Imelda Marcos. In short, this document legalized Ms. Bautista’s authority to sell the paintings without worry.

Le bassin aux nympheas, by Claude Monet, 1899
Source: Google

Secondly, it proved more complicated than expected to sell the prize painting of the lot, Monet’s “Le Bassin aux Nymphéas.” Estimated at somewhere around $40 million, the Bautista team knew that it would fetch a low value on the parallel market. In order to go through with the sale, the painting needed to be authenticated and processed for shipment overseas in case the prospective buyer was not on American soil. Hence, they enlisted several real estate brokers to cover their tracks and act as decoys or ‘fronts.’ Lesson: when selling hot property, including illicitly obtained art works whether in association with acts of mass slaughter or plain old misappropriation such as in the Marcos case, one needs to enlist a “go-between” who is accustomed to working unethically on the dark side of the tracks and can facilitate through “contacts” and “networks” an illicit sale, even beyond national borders.

In this case, after one failed attempt with a prospective buyer in New York, who actually raised concerns about the provenance and the right of Ms. Bautista to sell the painting in the first place, a prospective buyer was identified in London who would be willing to pay $32 million for the painting, despite his misgivings about title and authority of Ms. Bautista to dispose of this high-value item. The Bautista team even invoked Mrs. Marcos’ name to lend credibility to the pedigree of the work. Eventually, the painting was sold after the London buyer received written reassurances about the provenance of the work.

Question: $32 million represents a fairly tidy sum to spend on a painting for which there are doubts about clear title and ownership history. With so many questions hanging in the balance, how could a buyer act on the assumption that the people whom he suspected of being less than honest with him in fact were legitimate and had the right to sell him the Monet painting? Did the mere mention of Mrs. Marcos’ name impress this person beyond a doubt? Is it that easy, therefore, to swindle very wealthy people on the simple premise that these people would prefer to own an impressive Monet painting even with a cloud hanging over the true ownership of the work? This most recent example proves that, indeed, monied players in the international art market continue to forgo common sense, throw caution to the wind, do not follow their gut instincts and agree to acquire objects with problematic origins as to title and ownership. If they can do it with a recently-acquired painting, they can certainly do it with works that changed hands illegally more than 65 years ago and remained ‘concealed’ for decades before reappearing on the market—open or parallel.

Cyrus Vance, Jr.
Source: Google

To cap this story, the District Attorney of Manhattan, Cyrus Vance, Jr., stated unequivocally: “The integrity of the international art market must be protected….” I wonder where he was when Nazi looted art surfaced in his jurisdiction. We never heard him make such statements before. Let’s hope he means it and applies the lessons of the Marcos case to historic WWII-era thefts. Time will tell. One thing is sure: Cyrus Vance, Jr., pales in comparison to his predecessor, Robert Morgenthau. C’est la vie…

Epilogue: when checking Volume IV of the catalogue raisonné of Claude Monet’s works, authored by Daniel Wildenstein, there exist 11 variants of the “Bassin aux Nymphéas” all painted in 1899. Only one of them is in London, at the National Gallery (No. 1516, p. 156). There are no references whatsoever to a painting fitting that description and acquired by Mrs. Marcos in the 1970s which then hung at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Philippines. Curious?

Monet Catalogue raissoné
Source: Google