“Enfants jouant à la table” by Edouard Vuillard

Édouard Vuillard, Enfants jouant à la table, 1922-1923, 

Christie’s New York, 13 May 2025

by Claudia Hofstee

A signed pastel drawing, Enfants jouant à la table (Children playing at a table) by the French artist Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940), dated 1922-1923, an unpublished work, was consigned at Christie’s New York to be sold on 13 May 2025. It shows two small children, a girl in a pink dress and a boy with a white shirt sporting a ruffled collar and a black one-piece suit, sitting around a table. 

Édouard Vuillard, Self-portrait, 1889, 
National Gallery of Art, 
Washington, DC

Identification of the children

The children depicted in the Christie’s pastel are those of the Jewish art collectors Juliette Weil née Schloss (1885-1976) and her husband, Prosper-Émile Weil (1873-1963). In 1922, Juliette Weil commissioned Edouard Vuillard to paint a portrait of her and her two children, Claudie (1917-?) and Alain (1918-2015), which Vuillard completed in 1923. There are remarkable similarities in the appearance of the children in the painting and the Christie’s pastel. They are also of a similar age. Mathias Chivot [CH1], co-author of the catalogue raisonné on Vuillard, confirmed the identification of the children in the Christie’s pastel as Claudie and Alain Weil. He also stated that the pastel was a preparatory drawing for the painting Madame Weil and Her Children (1922-1923).

The Weil Collection

Juliette Weil née Schloss was the daughter of Adolphe Schloss (1842-1910), a German-Jewish art collector. Several months after her father’s death in late December 1910, she married a Paris doctor, Prosper-Émile Weil, on 22 February 1911. Juliette and Prosper-Émile Weil were close friends of Vuillard and belonged to his intimate circle. The couple collected paintings and drawings by French modern artists like Édouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Ker-Xavier Roussel (1867-1944) and Odilon Redon (1840-1916). Before WWII broke out in 1939, their art collection (the ‘Weil Collection’ or ‘Collection’) consisted of 88 works of art. On 16 April 1943, the Weil Collection was confiscated by Vichy officials and German security agents from Château de Chambon, Laguenne (Corrèze), where it had been hidden for safekeeping. The Collection was confiscated together with the Adolphe Schloss Collection. Both collections were taken to Paris and stored at the Banque Dreyfus, where the Weil collection was inventoried on 11 August 1943 by art dealer André Schoeller (1881-1955). Schoeller was responsible for appraising many artworks confiscated by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in Paris and served as an expert appraiser with Paris courts. 

The sale of the Weil Collection was organized by Jean-François Lefranc (1890-1950), the orchestrator of the mass confiscation at Laguenne. The Weil Collection in its entirety was placed with Schoeller’s at his Parisian gallery, 13 rue de Téhéran. The art dealer Raphaël Gérard (1886-1963) bought most of the Weil collection on 28 September 1943, for the sum of 2,428,100 FR. Throughout the war, Gérard traded in confiscated artworks, dealt with compromised art dealers, and made gifts to Nazi officials. At the end of the German occupation, without waiting for a court order, Gérard returned almost all the works to the Weil family. He even bought back some of the works that he had sold and, when the artworks were no longer accessible, he provided monetary compensation to Weil who waived all further claims against Gérard, although he did not recover all of the works from his collection.

The Banque Dreyfus inventory of the Weil Collection lists as inventory (Inv.) no. 5 a work entitled de Vuillard, pastel, représentant deux enfants autour d'une table (by Vuillard, depicting two children around a table). Other descriptions of pastels/sketches by Vuillard in the Weil Collection show that Juliette and Prosper-Emile Weil might have owned multiple preliminary drawings for Madame Weil and her Children. The painting Madame Weil and her Children (mentioned above) is listed as Inv. no. 77 de Vuillard, intitulé ‘Deux enfants et leur mère’ (toile) in the inventory.

 Edouard Vuillard, Madame Weil and her Children, Artnet

Provenance of Deux enfants autour d'une table until 1943

Artist's studio;

Private collection Dr. Prosper-Émile Weil (1873-1963) and Juliette Weil née Schloss (1885-1976), Paris;

 confiscated by Vichy officials and German security agents on16 April 1943;

Transferred to the CGQJ at Banque Dreyfus in Paris, 10 August 1943;

Transferred by Jean-François Lefranc to art dealer André Schoeller (1879-1955);
Sold to art dealer Raphaël Gérard (1886-1963), Paris, 28 September 1943-10 December 1943 (acquired from Schoeller, 25,000 FR, inv. nr. 22124);
Sold to art dealer Felix Mockers (d. 1944), Nice, 10 December 1943, (acquired from Gérard, 40,000 FR together with Dreyfus inv. no. 27/ Gérard inv. no. 22146, 40,000 FR)

On the day he purchased Inv. no. 5 of the Dreyfus inventory, Felix Mockers, also acquired another painting, Inv. no. 27 de Vuillard, intitulé L'enfant écrivant’ (pastel) (by Vuillard, entitled “Child writing”. Mockers went missing in Savoie around 1944, likely executed by the French Resistance. Gérard’s ledger indicates that he did not return nos. 5 and 27 of the Dreyfus inventory to the Weil family. It can be deduced that Gérard could not do so because he could not reach Mockers and buy them back. Consequently, inv. no. 5 of the Dreyfus inventory remained missing.

Provenance after 1944

According to Christie's, the painting was acquired by Galerie Aktuaryus in Zurich. Toni Aktuaryus (1893-1946), owner of Galerie Aktuaryus, was involved in selling Nazi looted artworks during WWII After 1945 certain artworks sold by Aktuaryus were subject to Jewish restitution claims for their losses under the Nazis. Galerie Aktuaryus closed after the death of Toni Aktuaryus on 28 March 1946. It was subsequently acquired by a private collector, although it remains unclear whether this provenance is contiguous. The pastel was then offered for sale at the Swiss auction house Klipstein & Kornfeld in Bern as lot no. 1053 on 17 and 18 June 1960. The auction entry provided no provenance information and did not name the consignor. We don’t know who acquired the pastel at the sale. Klipstein & Kornfeld have often been accused of negligent due diligence. For instance, Cornelius Gurlitt (1932-2014), the son of notorious pro-Nazi art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt (1895-1956), sold for decades artworks from his late father’s collection through Klipstein & Kornfeld.

The next entity in the Vuillard provenance is Galerie Hopkins in Paris, where the American art collector Julian Cohen (1924-2007) acquired it in May 2000. It is also unknown when and from whom the gallery acquired the object. These opaque provenances that highlight dealers compromised with the Nazi authorities and the Vichy regime further support the conclusion that Enfants jouant à la table, otherwise known as no. 5 of the Dreyfus inventory [Représentant deux enfants autour d'une table], is a looted work of art.

Klipstein & Kornfeld on 17 and 18 June 1960

Photo: Claudia Hofstee

The pastel was eventually withdrawn from the 13 May 2025 Christie’s sale for further research. The fate of the other missing pastel drawing [Dreyfus inv. no. 27/ [Gérard inv. no. 22146] remains unknown.

This article was edited by Marc Masurovsky.

Primary Sources

Archives Nationales-Pierrefitte, France

AN, Z/6/577, interrogation of Gabriel Mockers, report of 26 April 1947.
AN, F/12/9630, copie de la mainlevée de la saisie-revendication, 22 March 1945 (copy of the lifting of the seizure)
AP, 112W 14, letter from Jean-François Lefranc to Raphaël Gérard, 28 September 1943.
AP, 112W 14, offer to purchase from Raphaël Gérard to Jean-François Lefranc for the Weil collection, 26 September 1943. 

Archives du Ministère des Affairs Etrangéres, La Courneuve (AMAE) 

Dreyfus inventory, AMAE, MH 117, tableau no. 1- 81, pp. 35-38.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) via fold3.com

NARA, M1944, RG139, https://www.fold3.com/image/270257432/swiss-reports-page-199-eu-roberts-commission-protection-of- historical-monuments-1943-1946. Accessed 4 May 2025

Secondary accounts

Artdaily, “Galerie Kornfeld denies 'Nazi-looted' art claims insisting it only bought legitimate works”, https://artdaily.cc/news/66031/Galerie-Kornfeld-denies--Nazi-looted--art-claims-insisting-it-only-bought-legitimate-works#.YHGaqHtR02w. Accessed 4 May 2025.

“Gérard Raphael”, AGORHA, https://agorha.inha.fr/detail/180. Accessed 2 May 2025.

Gerber, Elisabeth Eggimann, Jüdische Kunsthändler und Galeristen, Eine Kulturgeschichte des Schweizer Kunsthandels mit einem Porträt der Galerie Aktuaryus in Zürich, 1924-46, 2022.

Gross, Raphael, Überprüfung der Provenienzforschung der S67ung Sammlung E. G. Bührle, 2024. https://www.lootedart.com/web_images/pdf2024/bericht-ueberpruefung-provenienzforschung-buehrle.pdf. Accessed 4 May 2025.

“Perdoux Yves", AGORHA, https://agorha.inha.fr/detail/86. Accessed 1 May 2025.

.Rosebrock, Tessa, Des Handels mit dem Feind beschuldigt. Akteure des Pariser Kunstmarkts vor der Commission nationale interprofessionnelle d’épuration und dem Cour de la Justice du département de la Seine, 2017, pp. 1-9.

Wasserman, Janet, Three hidden figures of Nazi art looting, 1940-1945: Santo Semo, Hugo Barcas, Rudolf Holzapfel, 2023, pp. 1-152.

Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Archives, Galerie Felix Gérard and Galerie Raphaël Gérard records, Stock books 1937-1945, Sales register, April 1941-July 1945; Purchases register March 1941- July 1945.

Correspondence

Email correspondence with Mathias Chivot, 1 May 2025.

Photos

Mutual art - courtesy of Christie’s
Artnet – courtesy of Christie’s
Photo by Claudia Hofstee

Acknowledgments

We are deeply grateful for the assistance given to the author by Mathias Chivot who wa kind enough to authenticate the history of the work by Edouard Vuillard and verify the identity of its subjects.

The Allentown settlement

Portrait of Georges the Bearded

by Marc Masurovsky

In late August 2024, the Allentown Art Museum in Allentown, PA, announced that it had reached an agreement with Henry and Herthe Bromberg, heirs of Martin Bromberg, a Hamburg-based German Jewish businessman regarding a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop entitled “Portrait of Georges the Bearded, Duke of Saxony.” The museum’s leadership celebrated the agreement as a “just and fair solution…in the spirit of the Washington Principles on Nazi-confiscated art…”. The museum’s lawyer, Nicholas O’Donnell, suggested that this agreement was a “reminder that zero sum thinking in restitution cases does not have to be the only way…”(1)  “Zero sum thinking” according to a recent New York Times article, implies that “life is a battle over finite rewards where gains for one mean losses for another.”

The Bromberg family’s losses were beyond their control due to the virulent Nazi-led implementation of anti-Jewish policies sweeping Germany after 30 January 1933. According to Max Weintraub, president of the Allentown Art Museum, the Cranach had not been confiscated by the Nazis nor had it been the subject of “a forced sale,” The museum argued that the painting had changed hands in the context of “Flight Goods [fluchtgut] while the Brombergs were fleeing from persecution…” In other words, the museum’s stance was that the Brombergs most likely sold the painting after they had left Germany.  It concluded that the historical research was inconclusive on the issue of duress and a forced sale.

However, Artnet on 26 August 2024 reported that the Brombergs had sold the painting to the Paris-based Galerie F. Kleinberger in 1938. The Allentown Art Museum did not mention the 1938 sale to Kleinberger Gallery in Paris. On that same day, the Art Newspaper indicated that the painting had been at the Bromberg residence in Hamburg until at least 1935, that its whereabouts thereafter were uncertain until the Brombergs approached Galerie Kleinberger in Paris in December 1938 at which point it sold the “Bromberg Collection” to Allen Loebl, the Parisian gallery’s representative. Allegedly, the Cranach was part of that sale. The article’s author is formal on one point: “the context of the loss was escape from persecution,” which is the starting point for a fleeing Nazi victim’s experience of duress.

The historical evidence surrounding the sale of the “Bromberg Collection” in late 1938 to a Parisian art dealer surfaced when the French government agreed in 2016 to restitute a painting by Joos van Cleve to the Bromberg heirs which was also part of the “Bromberg Collection.” The French National Museum Directorate (Direction des Musées de France) characterized the sale of the Bromberg Collection as not fitting within the standard definition of a commercial transaction but should be viewed as a forced sale resulting from the duress experienced by the Bromberg family as they fled Nazi persecution. 

This interpretation of the circumstances surrounding the sale of the “Bromberg Collection” contrasts sharply with the “Fluchtgut” theory advanced by the Allentown Art Museum. Fluchtgut cases are traditionally viewed as a diluted version of a Nazi victim’s “persecution scenario” because the claimed works were sold outside the territory of Nazi Germany, thus in a superficial context of “Freedom.” It’s hard to know if the French would have restituted the van Cleve had they had found it to be a product of “fluchtgut.”

Archival documents point to a subsequent sale of the Bromberg Collection by Kleinberger to Hans Wendland, a German art dealer who was heavily involved in recycling looted and displaced Jewish-owned cultural goods during the Nazi era. Wendland may have sold some of the Bromberg works to New York art dealers with whom he had longstanding ties, thus giving additional texture to the transfer of some of the Bromberg works from Europe to the New York art market shortly before the Allied-enforced Atlantic blockade came into force.

The Allentown settlement challenges the restitution paradigm enshrined in the physical return of the contested object to the claimants. The injection of grey hues into this supposedly black/white approach to restitution suggests that we can consider watered down “readings” of the impact of Nazi persecution on Jews fleeing to safety thus allowing us to “sand down” the rough edges of the “Nazi persecution scenario” as it applies to hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing Nazi rule and leveraging their goods abroad in order to survive, thus once again pitting private property rights against the moral and ethical ramifications of genocide.

Brief recap of the Brombergs’ Lucas Cranach painting

30 January 1933: The Nazis come to power in Germany. It is the beginning of a vast and criminal anti-Jewish campaign sponsored by the Third Reich which will last until 8 May 1945 after the genocide of six million Jewish men, women and children.

Up to 1935: the Cranach is still at the Hamburg residence of the Bromberg family.

November-December 1938: sale to Allen Loebl of the Galerie F. Kleinberger Galerie in Paris. Hans Wendland was instrumental in dispersing the Bromberg collection including an unknown number to New York art dealers.

1939-1961: Bromberg paintings enter the New York art market, either across the Atlantic Ocean by boat, or by plane via Lisbon (The famous “Pan Am Clipper”) or via South and Central America (mostly Argentina, Mexico, Cuba and Venezuela) during WWII.

1961: the Allentown Art Museum acquires the Cranach painting from a New York gallery.

2016: A painting by Joos van Cleve is restituted to the Brombergs by the French Ministry of Culture under Audrey Azoulay’s impetus.

2022: The Allentown Art Museum receives a restitution claim from the Bromberg heirs for the painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder. The museum’s research points to a sale date which postdates the Brombergs’ exit from Nazi Germany, hence its insistence on categorizing the sale as “fluchtgut."

August 2024: the Allentown Art Museum enters into an agreement with the Bromberg heirs to sell the painting and share the proceeds thereof. Christie’s New York organizes the sale.

Notes

(1) comment excerpted from a statement by Nicholas O’Donnell on LinkedIn in February 2025.

Utopian thoughts on a lazy, snowy Friday

by Marc Masurovsky

Museums
Acquisitions of objects are limited to those objects with no taint whatsoever on title. Under-provenanced objects with significant gaps and riddled with uncertainties as to past ownerships and locations must not enter a museum.

The museum’s research budget allows for a team of full-time researchers whose sole purpose is to keep the museum “honest.” 

Louvre, Paris

If problems emerge in the ownership history of objects in the permanent collection, all measures must be taken to clear title by submitting the object to a detailed, forensic analysis. If additional research reveals illicit activity that might have resulted in an illegal transfer of ownership, the museum will right the past wrong, seek out the heirs of the rightful owners and work out a proper solution to fix the historical wrong as long as it reflects the wishes of the aggrieved parties (those who suffered the loss of the objects).

As a matter of course, the museum will make available to the general public all information about the history of each object in its permanent collection without judgment or preconceived notions. That information will be freely and readily accessible.

When a museum possesses a large inventory of objects obtained from indigenous communities, former colonies, and conflict zones, it will:

Humboldt Forum, Berlin

         

1/ identify the rightful owners of these objects, whomever they may be;

2/ take the necessary steps to contact their representatives and consult them as to how to treat these objects;

3/ if repatriation is in order, the museum will abide by this decision and return the objects;

4/ if other solutions are envisioned, they too shall be respected and implemented as long as they reflect the wishes of the aggrieved parties (those who suffered the loss of the objects).

Auction houses

Recognizing the fact that there are thousands of auction houses worldwide, it is almost impossible to regulate their activities without imposing severe constraints on the global art market. Still, auction houses are the main purveyors of looted and otherwise stolen cultural property.

To stanch the in- and out-flows of stolen cultural goods, governments will establish oversight bodies whose sole purpose is to ensure that auction houses comply with rules and standards that will rid the market of unprovenanced, under-provenanced goods whose origin cannot be explained either by the consignor or the seller. If this is unreasonable, at the very least, auction houses will post “buyer beware” notices for un-and under-provenanced objects that they offer for sale. The goal is to inform consumers much like government agencies issuing product alerts. If art objects are commodities, they should be regulated in the same way that pharmaceutical, cosmetics, food and other products are.

Christie's

Hôtel Drouot

Collectors, dealers, and brokers

Private handlers of cultural goods are an important cog in the global machinery of recycling and dissipation of looted and otherwise stolen cultural objects around the world.

Without them, looters, plunderers and thieves find it challenging to “fence” their loot and to make quick money off of it, thus increasing their risk and disincentivizing the act of plunder and theft.

These handlers must be prohibited from offering any object which is un-or under-provenanced or whose past history shows clear signs of dislocation and illicit transfers of title. If they do, criminal penalties must be imposed on them and their accomplices.

Can privateers be deterred from acquiring objects with dubious provenance information that casts a cloud on title? They will, no matter what any government says or does. Realistically, their activity cannot be completely deterred but their quest to sell these objects on the open market must be interdicted.

Does this open the door to the creation of a parallel art market which operates under the radar? That market already exists and probably always will. Wars, conflicts, crises, laissez-faire governments and regimes enable its existence an allow it to thrive under their very noses and, to some extent, with their complicit assent. The fact that national and international elites sustain its existence complicates the task of any regulator to restrict its expanse and depth. Any attempt to clamp down on the parallel market is politically dangerous for those in positions of power and influence.

Good faith defense

Civil law and common law countries will rethink how good faith serves as an almost-impenetrable defense against relinquishing looted objects to claimants. One possibility is to create exceptions to the good faith defense which remove that protection from those who acquire and sell stolen or plundered goods, even if they were unaware of the true origin of the objects which they acquired. This measure will allow restitution claims to proceed without claimants worrying that the current possessor will resort to good faith as a reason not to restitute their property.  Ignorance is not a defense. Those who dabble in the art market must exercise proper due diligence before acquiring, selling, displaying, donating, loaning cultural goods. Failure to do so must have legal consequences.

Ethical collecting

Can people build an ethical collection of art objects, viz., a collection of objects whose history is not tainted by ambiguous claims to ownership as a result of civil unrest, war, and genocide?

They can and they do. The thrill of seeking out beautiful objects whose acquisition becomes controversial because of the circumstanced surrounding the object (coercion, illegal extraction, outright theft, etc.) is the ultimate drug that fuels thrill-based acquisitions. If you’re skeptical, read about Thomas Hoving, Douglas Latchford, and many others in the museum and art worlds who took pride in their reckless manners and methods to secure “beautiful and unique” objects.



Photos:

Christie's-courtesy of Artisera.com

Hôtel Drouot--courtesy of Drouot.

"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?

Oprah and Adele II

by Marc Masurovsky

Warning:

This is an opinion piece and you—the reader—are always free to disagree with what you are about to read. Perhaps, after having spent two decades in the trenches of the art restitution movement, if there ever was such a thing,  my glasses have become tinted. Still, the inability and/or unwillingness of art market players, whether they be gallerists, auctioneers, private collectors, buyers, and brokers alike to be more forthcoming about publicizing the history of the objects with which they come into contact, remains to this day perplexing, in defiance of any reasonable argumentation, save for the old yarn that there is no law that compels one to disclose a full provenance for an art object, regardless of its origin.

In 1912, Gustav Klimt, the renowned master of the Austrian Secessionist movement, painted several portraits of a delicate, frail, wan, Jewish woman named Adele Bloch Bauer, the heiress to a sizeable fortune amassed by her husband, Ferdinand Bloch Bauer, one of the leading Jewish bankers of Vienna. Adele Bloch Bauer died in 1925.

The National Socialist German Reich absorbed Austria in an “Anschluss” in March 1938, a geopolitical act which served overnight as a suspended death sentence for the several hundred thousand Jews living in Austria at that time. The Nazification of Austria led to a systematic campaign of persecution targeting Austria’s Jewish community, punctuated by mass arrests, torture, evictions, expropriations, outright plunder of Jewish assets and later on, deportations, slave labor and extermination.

Those who could escape sought refuge in other parts of Europe and in the Americas; they managed to save themselves at great risk. Those who did not faced certain death. When the Holocaust and the Second World War ended in May 1945, three fourths of Austria’s Jews had been massacred and all of their property confiscated, either absorbed by non-Jews in Austria or dissipated, as art and other fungible assets, through domestic and international market outlets. Postwar efforts to recover expropriated property proved mostly futile for surviving Jewish family members. The Bloch Bauer paintings remained where they had been sequestered with the able assistance of pro-Nazi Austrian and German art historians and museum officials—in a Viennese museum. They hung on the walls of the Belvedere Museum for all to view and became associated with the rebirth of Austria, drawing tourists to Vienna from around the world. Gustav Klimt’s star rose until he earned a posthumous recognition as a world-class artist much like his younger colleague, Egon Schiele.

Decades later, Maria Altmann, a niece of the Bloch Bauer family who resided in California, filed a restitution claim to recover her family’s cultural property, including the two portraits of her aunt, Adele Bloch Bauer, commissioned from Gustav Klimt.

Her lawyer, E. Randol Schoenberg, fought a lengthy and protracted battle for her claim to even be heard in an American court. Her case went all the way to the US Supreme Court where Mr. Schoenberg prevailed in his bid to sue the current possessor of the paintings, the Republic of Austria, in an American court. In the end, the Austrian government was compelled to restitute five Klimt works to Maria Altmann. By 2005, the commercial value of the paintings had accrued to more than 300 million dollars, a staggering sum of money by anyone’s standards.

Once restituted, Ms. Altmann sold the paintings in November 2006 through the Christie’s auction house in New York. An anonymous buyer aggressively pursued by telephone the “Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer II” starting at 74 million dollars and pressing upwards until 87 million dollars capped the anonymous bidder’s quest to acquire Adele II.

In 2014, Adele II was on loan to the Museum of Modern Art in New York where it hung on the 5th floor.

The global art dealer, Larry Gagosian, spotted the painting.

One of his clients, a wealthy Chinese investor, offered 100 million dollars for the Klimt masterpiece. The anonymous owner countered with 150 million dollars. as an acceptable sales price.

The deal was consummated, thus doubling Adele II’s value in ten years. News of the transaction revealed that the anonymous buyer in 2006 was none other than Oprah Winfrey, global talk show maven, personality and role model.  Oprah Winfrey’s desire for anonymity is consistent with standard practices in the art world whereby it is considered to be no one’s business who buys what from whom. Unfortunately, such built-in opacity, disguised as a respectful quest for privacy, casts a lasting cloak of mystery over most art transactions which produces a shield that enables trafficking in illicitly acquired objects and trading in objects whose provenance is highly questionable.

Every private buyer, in an unregulated market such as the art market, has the right to treat his/her acquisitions of art, even high-priced art, as he/she sees fit.  Nevertheless, it would have been a historical moment had Ms. Winfrey announced that she had acquired the Bloch Bauer portrait in 2006.  Perhaps I am making the wrong assumption here, whereby the history of the painting moved her and fueled her quest to acquire this Klimt masterpiece, regardless of the cost. It may be that she merely viewed  "Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer II" as a beautiful art object for which she was determined to spend as much money as it took to make it hers and to profit from its resale a decade later in an astute business transaction involving a Chinese buyer. It could very well be that the painting’s history was not the motivating factor in her decision to acquire Adele II. However harsh that may sound, it is a real possibility. Her silence in this matter makes it difficult to weigh in on either side of this conundrum.

Looted works of art, regardless of their value, function as perennial esthetic symbols of and silent witnesses to a painful history tainted by genocide which engulfed millions of lives over a twelve-year period; the tragic destinies of the victims are forever intertwined with and embodied in these objects.

When these looted objects are traded on the international marketplace, sometimes for substantial sums of money, the sale itself becomes the event and supplants the history of the object, thus stripping it of its painful past. The plundered object loses its context, much like an antique piece illegally removed from its matrix. The sale works like an anesthetic; it deadens history, it whitewashes like cleanser the oftentimes twisted and tragic context through which the object evolved before reaching us.

It makes me wonder: why should I care so much about the history of these objects which, oftentimes, are reduced to---objects without a past, adornments, some more extraordinary than others?

Why teach history? Why share knowledge? why the urge to contextualize works and objects of art, to restore their history, their stories?

Will the Chinese buyer who has spent 150 million dollars to own the “Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer II” even care about the history of this object? Will it remind him, however remotely, of the millions of art objects which suffered a similar, if not worse fate, as they were plundered by Japanese Imperial forces on the Chinese mainland between 1931 and 1946? Does any of this matter?

A teachable moment has once again vanished like sand flowing between one’s fingers, sacrificed on the altar of money.

Rest assured, however, that 87 million dollars, 150 million dollars, do not, cannot and will not erase the taint of persecution and genocide from these looted objects. 

Ever.

S. 2763: Restitution kabuki

an opinionated piece by Marc Masurovsky

Note: The title was inspired by a close friend who is intimately involved in art restitution matters.

The authors of Senate Bill 2763, the “Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act” (HEAR Act), have as a major sponsor Republican Senator and former presidential candidate Ted Cruz. Another Republican co-sponsor is Senator Cornyn. Neither of them has been known to utter a word or express a single public thought about Holocaust claimants and/or about Nazi looted art. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York, who is no friend of art restitution advocates, is a co-sponsor of S.2763 with Senator Blumenthal from Connecticut.

On the afternoon of Tuesday, June 7, 2016, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a public hearing regarding Senate Bill 2763. The witnesses included Ron Lauder speaking on behalf of the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO), Monica Dugot of Christie’s, Agnes Peresztegi of the Commission for Art Recovery, Dame Helen Mirren, actress noted for her role as Maria Altmann in “The Woman in Gold”, and Simon Goodman, one of the heirs to the collection and property of the late Friedrich Gutmann.

Let’s deconstruct the title of the proposed bill:

Expropriated Art: is “expropriated” a legal term or just an evocative word to denote forcible removal without the owner’s consent? It might have been selected so that an acronym could be used to publicize the bill—in this case, HEAR. What if we had used displaced or misappropriated as substitutes for “expropriated”? Then we would get HDAR or HMAR. Not very elegant.

Does this proposed legislation cover all acts of illegal misappropriation of Jewish-owned cultural assets between 1933 and 1945? Or does the proposed legislation only cover those instances where a “public agency”, writ large, orders the “taking” of private property from Jews? Depending on how you answer these questions, the field of objects covered by this proposed legislation could change rapidly.

Recovery: it’s a word like any other, but does it actually mean “restitution” or simply the act of “recovering”? Merriam-Webster defines “recovery” as “the return of something that has been lost, stolen, etc.” What would have occurred if the Act had been called the “Holocaust Expropriated Art Restitution Act”? It would have been far more specific and more claimant-friendly. Then, the framers of the act could not be accused of playing footsy with the art market by keeping the wording ambiguous, because “recovery” is an ambiguous term, much as recovering from addiction leaves room for a relapse. Why ambiguous? Well, US troops “recovered” looted art throughout "liberated" Germany and Austria. Did it mean that it was “restituted”? No, it simply meant that it had to be shipped to countries where local officials would then “restitute” the objects to their rightful owners, or not.

Why the ambiguity? Is S. 2763 really a hat tip to the art market, a flirty wink to indicate that, no worries, your interests will be taken into account when this law finally passes?  In other words, “recovery” might also mean “just and fair” which usually means “financial settlement” where the seller or current possessor of the claimed looted item gets to hang on to the prized ownership title to the looted object.

“Recovery” is another way of saying that the art market continues to hold tremendous sway on how restitution works for Holocaust-era claimants.

At the end of the day, so the expression goes, it is always a business decision how a looted object gets "returned” and “recovered.”

Are claimants’ rights genuinely protected by S. 2763? Or is this bill a subversive sop to the art market and a gift to the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and to the American Alliance of Museums (AAM)? These two groups have fought for years to put an end to the claims process, callously indifferent and disdainful about how cultural objects are stolen, misappropriated, expropriated, displaced, whatever the word is to connote illegality.

As currently drafted, S. 2763 might be nothing more than a final attempt to address art restitution in the United States, offering the art market the equivalent of a social peace during a six-year period of claims hopefully unimpeded by statutes of limitations and laches (assuming that the final version of S 2763 keeps out laches, no guarantees given!). Claimants would presumably get a « fair day in court » where their claims may be assessed solely on their merits, again within a six year framework or less, depending on when the claimed item had been located and identified and the evidence garnered to back the claim.

S. 2763 is looking more and more like a thinly disguised message to claimants,.a last opportunity to file for restitution assuming that they know where their object is and they have the proper documentation to support their claim. If not, how will they obtain the evidence in the time allotted to them? How will claimants afford a court action against a current possessor especially if it is a museum or a billionaire collector with access to a well-supplied war chest ?

S. 2763 stacks the cards against claimants, however which way you look at it. Even if they do manage to garner the documentation, claimants will not be able to afford the hefty litigation fees associated with a proceeding to obtain restitution.

It is not possible to endorse S.2763 if a mechanism is not explicitly created which ensures that claimants will be supported in their attempt to recover their lost property. The Federal government should subsidize this commitment for at least ten years to ensure that claims are properly addressed and have a fair chance of being heard, by minimizing research and legal costs to claimants.

S. 2763 favors wealthy claimants with access to significant means to support research into their claims and legal action to recover identified objects which sit either in public or private collections. It is clearly not designed to help the vast majority of claimants, who lost cultural assets that are not museum-worthy. It provides succor to the very few, those who are familiar with the claims process and are able to demand the return of high-end items which their lawyers are willing to recover for them at rates the average claimant cannot possibly afford.

The claims process has always been skewed towards those who have lost cultural assets considered of great value in today’s market and towards whom gravitate most lawyers as well as market players.

Dessus de porte

by Marc Masurovsky

Source: NARA

On December 3, 2007, Christie’s Paris sold a painting by Marie Laurencin, entitled “L’embarcadère’ [Haut de Porte].” As is usual with Laurencin’s works, the subjects that she depicts consist for the most part of ethereal-looking women painted in wispy, light colors, gazing and poised.

This particular painting was produced in 1927 and was once the property of Paul Rosenberg, the late French Jewish art dealer with the keenest eye for the highest quality that one could muster in terms of 19th and early 20th century French modern art. It is not an exaggeration to say that most of the paintings, works on paper and sculptures that Rosenberg collected and sold were of museum quality. His legacy stretches across a global network of museums, galleries, and private collections.

In June 1940, the German Army overtook France in a classical blitzkrieg operation, catching the French army sleeping in the fields—literally. Rosenberg had the presence of mind to redistribute in lots of varying importance his vast collection of works and objects of art across depots in Tours, Bordeaux, and Floirac and a bank vault in Libourne.

Denounced by art dealing rivals in Paris anxious to gain access to some of his objects, the depots as well as his residence and gallery in Paris were quickly overrun by German agents and their trusted Frenchmen, the works confiscated and brought back to the Jeu de Paume for processing. Among the dozens of Laurencin works which fell into German hands, was “L’embarcadère”. At the time of seizure it was simply referred to as a “dessus de porte”, a painting that one places as a decorative item above a door frame. The title that the Germans eventually gave it is a literal evocation of what they observed on the canvas: “Zwei Mädchen im Boot und zwei auf einer Treppe” (two women in a boat and two on a landing). After it was brought to the Jeu de Paume and catalogued the Germans assigned to the painting the alphanumeric code “Rosenberg-Bernstein-Bordeaux 9.”

The provenance in the Christie’s catalogue indicates:

Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York (no. 1915).
Paul et Marguerite Rosenberg, Paris.
“Puis par descendance au propriétaire actuel” [thence by descent to the current owner]

The historical provenance would include the following pertinent facts:

Confiscated either in Floirac or in Paris, 1940-1941
Removed to the Jeu de Paume, by 1941
Inventoried by the ERR as Rosenberg-Bernstein-Bordeaux 9
Placed by the ERR on a train bound for Nikolsburg, 1 August 1944
Intercepted by French forces
Restituted to Paul Rosenberg, 25 September 1945.

Photograph taken by the ERR in 1941, Koblenz Archives