Anthony van Dyck and The Music Man

Portrait of Paulus Pontius,  Anthony van Dyck

by Marc Masurovsky

Adolphe Schloss spent the last thirty years of his life painstakingly assembling a collection of Old Master paintings—Dutch, Flemish, German, Italian, Spanish and French. When he died on New Year’s Eve of 1910-1911, Adolphe Schloss had collected more than 330 paintings. His widow and children took care of the collection until it was time to send it to safety at the approach of war in August 1939. Four years later, a commando of French and German agents stormed the site where the paintings were hidden at the Château de Chambon in Laguenne, Corrèze. They seized all the paintings and brought them to Paris for “processing.”

After they reached their destination on 10 August 1943, representatives of the Vichy government, senior officials from the Louvre, and German officials proceeded with the dismemberment of the confiscated collection. The Louvre snatched 49 paintings for its permanent collection while 262 paintings were sold manu militari to Hitler’s Linz Museum project, and 22 paintings served as a “finder’s fee” for the person who denounced the collection’s whereabouts, Jean-François Lefranc. The 262 paintings were shipped to Munich for storage at the Führerbau from which they were stolen between 29 April and 2 May 1945, under the very noses of American troops. One of those paintings was the Portrait of a gentleman-Paulus Pontius by Anthony van Dyck.

Before Adolphe Schloss acquired the work by 1896, Paulus Pontius had changed hands numerous times and travelled throughout Western Europe and the United Kingdom. Its earliest recorded owner was Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga (1690-1756), who held the painting until his death in 1756. Then it conveyed to Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga (1725-1808), Rome, until 1763 when an art dealer, Hendrick de Leth (1703-1766) acquired it. From there, the painting crossed the Channel and ended up at Peper Harow in Surrey, England with the Midleton Family (we think). It remained in Surrey until 1851 after which time it migrated to London into the hands of Wynn Ellis (1790-1875). By 1896, London-based P. & D. Colnaghi sold Paulus Pontius to Charles Sedelmeyer in Paris (cat. 1896, no. 11, ill.). Sedelmeyer was one of Adolphe Schloss’ main art advisors. Naturally, Schloss snapped up the van Dyck portrait that same year and it remained with him and the Schloss family until its confiscation in 1943.

Munich 1945

MCCP card #46622

The massive unprecedented and largely unsolved art theft at the Führerbau (29 April-2 May 1945) netted over 1100 paintings. While American troops were completing the liberation of Munich and ridding the embattled city of its most fanatical armed Nazi resisters, Munich citizens were busily robbing Hitler’s administrative office building in search of food, alcohol, and anything fungible with which to survive in war-torn Munich.

Like most of the plundered paintings removed from the Führerbau, Paulus Pontius went quickly underground. It took three years for Americans to catch wind of its possible location. Until then, its whereabouts had remained unknown to American and French investigators connected with the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP), a central processing station for all objects recovered by Allied troops in Bavaria and processed for repatriation to their countries of origin.

Wolfgang von Dallwitz

The efforts to locate the missing painting took an unusual turn in February 1948 when Wolfgang von Dallwitz, of Biedersteinstrasse 21 (Munich) told Edgar Breitenbach that he had seen the painting in mid-November 1947 at “the apartment of a friend in Munich” together with two other paintings from the Schloss collection (a painting by Ludolf Backhuyzen /Schloss 3, a painting by Abraham van Beijeren /Schloss 8). A Dr. Irwin Sieger had allegedly shipped them from a railroad depot in Göttingen. [Breitenbach to Leonard, “Information concerning stolen Schloss paintings,” 25 February 1948, www.fold3.com], a fact he denied vigorously when questioned by Breitenbach.

Irwin (or Erwin) Sieger

Allied investigators were unsure of Sieger’s identity since they had received conflicting reports about the activities of a man bearing that name actively engaged in concealing and dispersing art looted during WWII and stolen from the Führerbau. Under questioning, Dr. Erwin Sieger lived at Olgastrasse 98 in Munich who was known as an “unscrupulous businessman” and a self-described “art amateur”, pledged to assist US authorities with their investigations into the whereabouts of the Schloss paintings and others. [Breitenbach to Leonard, “Information concerning stolen Schloss paintings,” 25 February 1948, www.fold3.com].

Lt. Hugoboom

The music man

In early 1947, while serving as a MFAA officer in Munich, Lt. Ray W. [Wayne] Hugoboom received Portrait of Paulus Pontius as “turned-in loot from the Führerbau” which Hugoboom characterized as a “gift” from the Oberbürgermeister (Lord Mayor) of Munich. However, instead of returning it to the MCCP as he should have, Hugoboom asked Franz Söker in Neu-Gilching if he could restore the damaged painting. It took him about two weeks. 

Once ready, Hugoboom hung the painting in his office. He even mentioned to his former secretary, Miss Koslowski, that he had bought it on the black market in Munich and not to tell his superior officer, Captain Rae of the MFAA. Lt. Hugoboom had a black crate made with metal sidings in which to house the painting, ostensibly for shipment. When confronted by Edgar Breitenbach, Lt. Hugoboom contradicted Koslowski’s assertion in a letter dated 3 June 1948. He delivered a contrite apology about his errant ways in the handling of the van Dyck. [Ray W. Hugoboom, School of Music, Indiana Unversity, Bloomington, IN, to Edgar Breitenbach, MFAA, OMGBavaria, 3 June 1948; Breitenbach to Hugoboom, 26 May 1948, www.fold3.com].

The recovery

On 6 April 1948, Edgar Breitenbach recovered Anthony van Dyck’s Portrait of Paulus Pontius at the studio of Alfred Koch on Holbeinstrasse 5 (or 43), Munich. According to Breitenbach, the van Dyck painting was the third most important painting from the Schloss collection. As part of his investigation into the circumstances surrounding the van Dyck painting, Breitenbach summoned for questioning Franz Söker to the MCCP on 14 April 1948. [Herbert Leonard, OMGB, to Franz Söker, 14 April 1948, RG 260 M 1946 Reel 137 NARA. www.fold3.com].

Ray Wayne Hugoboom’s defense

After Lt. Hugoboom left Munich in mid-1947 and returned to the United States, he received a promotion to become Assistant Professor of Choral Practice at the School of Music at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Hugoboom retold his saga with the van Dyck and declared that “the painting was located in an alley rapped [sic] up in old papers, thoroughly soaked and quite badly damaged.” He largely corroborated his official story—restoration, hanging in his room “for a short time before leaving” and leaving the painting with Alfred Koch “momentarily.” He was so busy with plans for his departure that he forgot to “arrange for [the] return” of the painting to the MCCP. [Wayne Hugoboom to Edgar Breitenbach, 10 May 1948, RG 260 M 1946 Reel 137 NARA].

Breitenbach sets the record straight

In his reply to “dear Hugoboom,” Breitenbach informed him that his letter of 10 May 1948 had caused “considerable embarrassment” at the MFAA. His recounting of the facts did not tally with the MFAA’s investigation.

Firstly, the mayor of Munich did not show him the van Dyck painting and three other paintings. It is Alfred Koch who advised him on the selection. Koch remembered the other paintings very well: two Breughel-like landscapes and a Dutch interior with woman and child. Koch did recall your hesitancy in accepting the gift but that you decided to take it, nevertheless, hoping to donate it “at a later date to some museum.”

Secondly, the story of the gift from the Mayor’s office may have been a hoax. Did Hugoboom partake in it? Unsure. But Alfred Koch and an accomplice by the name of Gillman were certainly in on it. Breitenbach noted that an apology to the Oberbürgermeister was in order. Gillman was also involved as a bit player in the mishandling of another painting from the Schloss collection, Portrait of a Lady, by Bartholomeus van der Helst.

The MFAA ultimately laid the responsibility for the van Dyck affair at Hugoboom’s feet and suggested that the only way to fix it was for him to “make a clean breast” to the MFAA staff. [Edgar Breitenbach to Hugoboom, 26 May 1948, RG 260 M 1946 Reel 137 NARA].  On 3 June 1948, Hugoboom formally apologized to “Mr. Breitenbach.” [Wayne Hugoboom to Mr. Breitenbach, 3 June 1948, RG 260 M 1946 Reel 137 NARA].

Final destination

Portrait of Paulus Pontius, Israel Museum, Jerusalem

The van Dyck painting was repatriated to Paris on 3 June 1948 and restituted to the family of Adolphe Schloss on 6 July 1948. It was sold at Galerie Charpentier on 25 May 1949 (lot no. 17). Madeleine and Joseph R. Nash, an Australian couple living in Paris, acquired the painting. They died on 15 August 1977. Two years later, in keeping with their history of donations to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the painting was bequeathed anonymously to the Israel Museum.

Sources

RG 260 M 1947 Reel 137 NARA through www.fold3.com

ERR database

www.errproject.org

The Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project (JDCRP) Pilot Project

https://pilot-demo.jdcrp.org/

The Monuments Men and Women Foundation

https://www.monumentsmenandwomenfnd.org/hugoboom-lt-r-wayne

Reviewed and edited by Saida S. Hasanagic

So What Was on Hitler's Mind as an Art-Plunderer?

by Ori Z Soltes

For many readers of this blog, these observations may not be new, but for others they may provide food for thought. Those with historical awareness recognize that the Nazis more often than not didn't invent new ideas; they adopted old ones and innovated as they adapted them to their needs. 

Thus, for instance, at least as far back as the Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215, in which the 67th through the 70th canons dealt with the Jews, the idea was promoted in Christendom, and well-followed in parts of the realm, that Jews be rendered readily distinguishable from their good Christian neighbors by special clothing, or special marks--a yellow circle, for instance--on t heir clothing. Thus the eventual ubiquity that Jews across Nazi-controlled Europe wear yellow six-pointed stars was innovative in its details but not in its fundamental conception.

And the French created the first camps into which those guilty of no crime but who somehow should not be allowed to run around freely might be concentrated in the context of the Spanish Civil War. Too many Spaniards coming over the Pyrenees in 1938-9 (the infamous Retirada) made the prevailing French government uncomfortable and a mechanism that was, as it were, extra-legal had to be created to assuage that discomfort. The Nazis not only created a much wider system of concentration camps, but further enhanced the idea by designating some of them as slave-labor camps--and others as extermination camps.

And so with the issue of Nazi plunder, of cultural and other property--but particularly of cultural property--the historical precedents were many and some of the underlying reasons very familiar, but the shape of the plundering process was, again, innovative.

Lucius Mummius

One might begin by asking about those underlying reasons. Plundering the art of one's defeated enemies is one way of showing one's military and political success over them. But when Lucius Mummius, the Roman general--the first art plunderer whom we can identify by name--returned from his military success in subduing the Greeks at Corinth in 146 BCE, he carted piles of Greek statues back to Rome. The fourth-century CE Roman historian, Eutropius, informs us, with an amused tone, that Lucius took out an insurance policy on his plunder, and that the contract stipulated that, should any of the sculptures be damaged in transit, the company would supply the general with compensatory pieces equal in weight to those that were damaged.  
If Eutropius' amusement derives from his recognition that Lucius was an ignorant boor who had no concept of the intrinsic value of art, we might recognize that the purpose of acquiring his horde was precisely to show his friends and neighbors back home that he was not a boor, or a destructive savage, but a cultured man, who, while successful at his business of fighting and killing, appreciated the fine things wrought by human mind and hand.

Eutropius

We may see this intention emulated down through the centuries, arriving at an exalted destination in the far-reaching plunder of Napoleon, who brought back art from Egypt, and from Rome that had been taken by the Romans from Egypt, as he also did from other parts of Italy and from Spain and Germany and the Hapsburg domains. The Nazis followed this lead, eager to show how civilized they were. Even before they began to expand their plundering activities beyond their borders, they were determined to underscore this point by organizing a large exhibition of "true" art that ran virtually side-by-side with an exhibit of "degenerate" art. If the Nazis were consummately civilized, those who made and patronized the likes of Picasso and Matisse or anything abstract or connected to Jews, were surely barbaric. (Even an admired painter like Rembrandt, when he painted a work like "the Jewish Bride" slipped from his pedestal.)

Part of the Nazi innovation, of course, was to begin the plunder before there was a war outside their borders from their own citizens: barely was Hitler in position as Chancellor and his henchmen were forcing Jews to give up their collections--forced sales, mind you, nothing that could be legally called plundered--as gradually, over the next few years, Jews (and others) would be deprived of a range of citizenship rights before they began to be concentrated, for their own "protection" into designated camps, and before they would be deprived of their lives.

A second innovation, once the plundering process began to gain momentum, both within Germany and outside it--once the war itself officially began and countries beyond Germany either embraced (Austria, for example) or succumbed (Western Europe, for instance) to German arms--was the elaborate and systematic, multi-leveled program devoted simply to plunder. Thus on the one hand, with the Anschluss into Austria (March 1938), a program was implemented that required Jews--or anyone with even a vaguely Jewish relative--to fill out property-census forms. These listed everything they owned, from jewelry, silverware and furniture to drawings, paintings, and statues.

(One of the interesting proofs, both of how Austrian the Austrian Jews thought they were and thus of how taken by surprise they must have been by the onslaught on them not only of the Germans but of their Austrian neighbors, comes from a study of those property-census forms. When Marc Masurovsky and I had the chance a few years back to look over a few thousand of them, two things in particular, for which we were not searching, stood out. One was how Jews already living elsewhere, beyond Nazi reach, filled out forms, as required, and often added offhanded comments--for example, that a given bunch of drawings is not worth really mentioning--in a tone that indicated their sense of being virtual colleagues of the presumed readers of these forms. The second was how not only did so many Jews own works by second- and third-rate Austrian artists--Austrian artists, whose work good Austrians would own and display--but so many owned real estate, from merely part of an apartment to several apartment buildings or factories: one does not invest in real estate if one has even an inkling that one may need to leave quickly; it is too difficult to liquidate.)

Alfred Rosenberg

I digress. For a different aspect of systemic innovation was practiced in France, one of the places where Alfred Rosenberg--Hitler's expert in matters of racial distinctions (Aryans vs Slavs vs Roma vs Jews, from nose-type to hair-color to mental and moral acuity)--in charge of the organization that bore his name, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, (ERR), elaborated an extraordinary web of informants, from gallerists and museum directors to bankers and housemaids, regarding who had what and where, if it had been hidden, it could be found. It was this network that helped facilitate the plunder of cultural property on an unprecedented scale.

Part of the purpose of this massive undertaking, run by an army of plunderers who ran on a track parallel to that of the German army, was, to repeat, to underscore the cultured and civilized nature of the regime. The illusion that Nazis were civilized operated on different levels and for different sub-purposes. Oddly or not, the exhibition of proper art had been a failure: for every visitor to it more than a hundred flocked to see the "degenerate" art (Entartete Kunst) exhibit. Apparently far more Germans disagreed than agreed with Propaganda Minister Goebbels' notion of "real" art. 

Joseph Goebbels

On the other hand, the permission for several years to Jewish musicians to offer their own performances for their own, Jewish audiences--both Jewish musicians and Jewish audiences having been excluded early on from association with their non-Jewish counterparts--which permission was formally organized as der Judische Kulturbund (the KuBu, as it was popularly known); and the encouragement of music and, to an extent, visual art, at the Terezin Concentration Camp (its inhabitants often there temporarily, before being moved on to Auschwitz)--these kinds of activities were to enhance the illusion both that the Nazis fostered culture, even among the Jews, and in fact that the Fuhrer really loved his Jews. Perhaps no Nazi action with regard to art and culture was more cynical than the band of Jewish players that was organized to serenade victims at Auschwitz as they marched toward the gas chambers.

 What did the Nazis want with all the art that they plundered, besides using it as some proof of their high level of civilization and for other propagandistic purposes? Or rather, how did that intended validation play out? There was, to be sure, the art that was hoarded--but in different ways. The Fuhrer himself loved 18th- and 19th-century landscapes and images of happy, strong, beautiful--preferably blondish and blue-eyed--younger rather than older people, painted or sculpted by Northern European artists (as inherently superior than those in the south). Goering had more catholic tastes--even collecting art that Hitler would have disapproved. There was a line of German and Austrian museum directors who were looking to beef up their collections and there were Nazi upper and lower echelon operatives who wanted works for themselves, all available at bargain-basement prices through the auctions that followed both forced-sales and, later, outright confiscations.

Design for the so-called Fuhrermuseum in Linz, Austria

Hitler had in mind, in fact, to build the largest art museum that the world had ever seen in his hometown of Linz, Austria. This was effectively the other side of a project to take place in Prague: the shaping of a huge museum of Jewish ceremonial objects, using the synagogues in the city's 850-year-old Jewish quarter to house the collections. Hitler's intention was to show the world how vast and powerful had been the Jewish civilization that he had destroyed--a statement of what he had accomplished as a kind of gift to humanity. For the sake of this museum both the synagogues and the artifacts survived.

Otherwise, the plunder of Judaica was intended to lead to its destruction--usually, by melting it down if it was made of silver or gold. Degenerate art was slated to be traded for art that was more acceptable, or to be sold through myriad willing "neutral" intermediaries in places like Switzerland, Sweden and--yes--France, (to be purchased in active, question-free art markets like that in New York) in order to raise money for armaments, particularly as the war effort moved away from its early blitzkrieg of success.

By then even as the battlefield results were increasingly negative for the Nazis and their allies, the war against the Jews--the Holocaust--continued unabated. That ongoing effort was, of course, facilitated by British and American governments who found good excuses for limiting their efforts to curtail the destruction of the Jews (by bombing the train tracks to Auschwitz, for instance) on the specious grounds that this would take away from their effort to win World War II. Lucius Mummius as a model of self-promoting cultural illusion and his Nazi emulators and expanders were not alone in either looking at plundered cultural property through closed eyes or in promoting illusions about themselves to and for themselves and the wider world.

"Neutral" Europe during WWII

Gabriel Metsu at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC

This stunning exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, which had already been at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, brings together more than 30 playful, delicately observant genre paintings by a 17th century Dutch master, Gabriel Metsu.

Interestingly, the paintings labeled as coming from “private collections” turn out to be the ones with the more complex histories.

As part of our commitment to transparency in the global art market, here is our version of the Metsu exhibit currently on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

“A Woman writing a letter,” c. 1662-64, Oil on panel, Private Collection.

"A Woman Writing a Letter", Gabriel Metsu
Source: National Gallery of Ireland

"A Woman Writing a Letter", Gabriel Metsu
Source: DHM MCCP Database via Bundesarchiv

According to the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP) Database, this painting originated in Amsterdam. It was sold by a dealer named Hartog to agents of Adolf Hitler’s Linzmuseum project. The Allies found the painting at Altaussee before returning it for processing and repatriation to Holland from the Munich collecting point.

“A hunter visiting a woman at her toilet[te],”, 1661-63, Oil on panel, private collection, United States.

"A Hunter Visiting a Woman at Her Toilette", Gabriel Metsu
Source: ERR Project via Bundesarchiv

"A Hunter Visiting a Woman at Her Toilette", Gabrielle Metsu
Source: National Gallery of Ireland

This charming interior scene hails from a private collection somewhere in the United States. At one point in time, it belonged to the heirs of Alphonse de Rothschild in Paris, France, from where the Germans plundered it in the summer of 1940. After being processed at the Jeu de Paume, Hermann Goering took custody of this painting as he did of many others from the Rothschild collection. Moreover, the ERR art-historical staff produced a complete pre-1940 provenance as exemplified by the content of the card produced for this painting and designated as R 5/”Das Besuch.”

R 6
Source: DHM MCCP Database via Bundesarchiv

R 6
Source: ERR Project via NARA

It was processed through the MCCP and repatriated to France in September 1945 and subsequently restituted to the Rothschild family.

R 6
Source: DHM MCCP Database via Bundesarchiv

R 6
Source: ERR Project via NARA

You can also find this painting at http://www.errproject.org/jeudepaume/card_view.php?CardId=6343

Last but not least, my favorite Metsu painting of this set:

“Le corset rouge/Red corset” or “Woman artist with red corset”, circa 1661-64, oil on panel, Private collection.

"Woman Artist with Red Corset"
Source: ERR Project via Bundesarchiv

"Woman Artist with Red Corset"
Source: National Gallery of Ireland

Who knows who the happy current anonymous owner is of this wonderful painting? What we do care about is that it also belonged to the Rothschild family in Paris, France. Dubbed “Die Malerin” by the ERR and labeled “R 8”, this painting suffered the same fate as that of the “Hunter visiting a woman at her toilet[te]”. But, since it had suffered some damage and was in need of restoration, the ERR sent it to Buxheim where the official ERR restorer, Otto Klein and his staff helped stabilize it. Rather than go through Munich, the painting was repatriated to France in December 1945 and restituted to the Rothschild family.

 

R 6
Source: ERR Project via NARA

R 8
Source: ERR Project via NARA

If you are in Washington, DC, please visit the Gabriel Metsu exhibit at the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art and realize, once again, that behind every work on public display lies a complex and sometimes dramatic story provoked by unpredictable turns of history.

'Human Rights and Cultural Heritage: from the Holocaust to the Haitian Earthquake'

Brookdale Center, Cardozo Law School
Source: Wikipedia

This one-day symposium took place on March 31, 2011, at Cardozo Law School in downtown Manhattan.

It featured, among other things, a panel on "Nazi-Era Looted Art: Research and Restitution."  The speakers included one person from the art trade, Lucian Simmons, a vice president at Sotheby's; Larry Kaye, of the law firm of Herrick Feinstein who co-chairs its art law group; Inge van der Vlies, who is a senior official of the Dutch Restitution Committee in Amsterdam; Lucille Roussin, co-organizer of the conference and head of the Holocaust Restitution Claims Practicum at Cardozo Law School.... and myself, as co-founder of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project and the only non-lawyer and historian in the assembly.

Lucian Simmons
Source: Sotheby's

Larry Kaye spoke about the events surrounding the seizure of the 'Portrait of Walli' by Egon Schiele and the involvement of his firm in the settlement of the case with the Leopold Foundation in Vienna, Austria.  He also addressed some sensitive issues governing the plunder of the Goudstikker collection in Amsterdam and the postwar role of the Dutch government in not facilitating the restitution of many items in that collection.

Howard Speigler, left, and Lawrence Kaye
Source: The New York Times via Fred R. Conrad

Lucian Simmons described how Sotheby's is leading the charge on art restitutions, careful, though, not to intrude on the rights of the consignors and the good faith purchasers, and reminding all of us that there are two victims in this game--the historical victim who lost the work or object and the good faith purchaser who--god forbid!--was caught with it, thinking it was perfectly fine. He did address an early incident involving a painting by Jakob van Ruysdael which had been withdrawn from a sale at Sotheby's London, in October 1997 on account of its shady provenance--which indicated that it had been acquired for Hitler's Linz Museum project.

Inge van der Vlies
Source: Raad Voor Cultuur

Inge van der Vlies gave us a painstaking description of the processes involved in assessing art claims in Holland through her restitution committee, reminding us all that, had the Dutch government adhered strictly to the rule of law, no returns would have been possible to claimants because of statutory and other considerations governing ownership of works of art.  Hence, its munificence in 'doing the right thing' governs the debate on restitution.  Larry Kaye took exception to the Dutch government's interpretation of what constitutes legally binding decisions in art restitution cases.  Nothing further needs to be said here about this.

Being the historian of the group, my task was to give context to the issue of restitution. I opened up the subject writ large, going back to the Hague conventions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries which sought to define protections for civilians and their property while armies duked it out near their fields.  My point, which is not popular, is that plunder of works and objects of art motivated by ideological, political, racial, and ethnic considerations are characteristic of the first half of the 20th century, starting with Armenia, going through the muddle of the First World War, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, the Anschluss, the establishment of a Nazi protectorate in then-Czecholovakia, the disappearance of Poland, the Nazi invasion of Western and Northern Europe, and the subsequent onslaught against the Soviet Union and southeastern Europe.  Not much time left to discuss the fundaments of restitution except to indicate that market considerations reigned supreme in the immediate postwar which compelled the US government in 1946 to liberalize the art trade by quickly eliminating wartime restrictions on the imports of cultural objects into the US, without knowing what objects might be of illicit origin.  The US and its allies shut down art claims in and around 1948 in their respective zones of occupation in Germany and Austria, thereby shifting the claims process to national governments in Europe and the Americas.

Howard Spiegler, Larry Kaye's alter ego at the Art Law Group of Herrick Feinstein, delivered a genuinely entertaining lecture over lunch where he took on the critics of art restitution litigation, especially aimed at high-revenue firms such as his and Larry's.  Point well taken.  Someone has to do the work.  The problem since 1945? There is still no national and/or international mechanism by which claimants who cannot afford to pay legal fees can be guaranteed a satisfactory procedure through which to articulate their losses and seek redress.  It's now been 66 years since the end of the Second World War and chances are that nothing will ever happen.

The main disappointment in an otherwise productive conference was the inability of the conveners to make a link between Holocaust-era losses and cultural property disputes in the postwar era, and also to address the confusion and complications arising out of the distinction between cultural property and other types of art objects and works of art.  Currently countries such as Italy are deliberately placing Holocaust- and World War II-era losses under the roof of cultural property and cultural patrimony, thus treating a painting by Claude Monet on the same basis as an antique urn.  The end result? the likelihood that the object, even if restituted, cannot leave Italian territory without special permits.  Something akin to what takes place in Austria with works by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, and in France, with any masterpiece produced on French territory.

Hopefully, at some future forum, someone will take the brave step and challenge these artificial barriers that separate antiquities from the rest of artistic production.

The Night of the Generals, directed by Anatole Litvak

Night of the Generals 1967 Movie Poster
Source: IMPAwards

I just finished watching this oldie but goodie from 1966, starring Peter O'Toole as a psychotic SS General, adapted from a novel by French author, Joseph Kessel.

One particular scene attracted my attention. Peter O'Toole's character, SS General Tanz, visits the Jeu de Paume in the Jardin des Tuileries, courtesy of the German General Staff in occupied Paris. He is offered a private tour of the art looted from Jewish households, which has been stored there before being shipped to Germany.

It would all be fine except that we are now on July 18, 1944. Most of the art looted by the Germans and taken to the Jeu de Paume for processing had already been either sent to the Reich for dispersal or incorporation into either the future Linz Museum collection or other State or private collections, or been disposed of on the Paris art market.

SS General Tanz is taken into a private room protected by a curtain that cloaks a metal gate. Behind the curtain and the gate is a room where 'decadent' works are stored, as they called them in the film.

This is where it gets curious. Lance Corporal Hartmann (played by Tom Courtenay) who accompanies SS General Tanz has a ledger in hand from which he describes each painting that Tanz reviews. How extraordinary! especially since such an 'exhibit' ledger did not exist. Nevertheless, we see reproductions of paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec (Le Divan), a nude by Renoir which he painted in 1910, Paul Gauguin's "On the Beach," and, most amazingly a painting by Chaim Soutine described as 'Le Garcon d'Etage [the Bellboy]', Edgar Degas' 'The Tub" painted in 1886. I would stop here were it not for the self-portrait by Van Gogh, sometimes called "Vincent in Flames" which entrances General Tanz who almost goes into convulsions so hypnotic is the work.

Were these paintings ever at the Jeu de Paume? I checked the ERR database at www.errproject.org/jeudepaume, on the off-chance that they might be listed there.

None of them are and the Degas looked more like a Bonnard.

The Van Gogh does not appear to exist either.

Why take such license when there were so many great works to choose from, reproduce and display?

The only truth to the story is that many such 'decadent' works had been prepared for shipment to a castle in present-day Czech Republic at Nikolsburg/Mikulov on August 1, 1944. The train barely made it out of Paris and was stopped by the French resistance near a small town called Aulnay-sous-Bois. On that train were a trove of Impressionist works which the rightful owners recovered in due course.

The Train, 1964
Source: imdb

The subject of that dramatic story is treated in yet another film aptly called 'The Train' by John Frankenheimer, made in 1964, with Burt Lancaster in the starring role.

Epilogue

SS General Tanz is set to leave the 'decadent' room--in the film, it is labeled 'Salle E', while in the actual history of the Jeu de Paume, it is referred to as the 'Salle des Martyrs." On his way, he picks up what look like flyers from a stack on a table. These are reproductions of some of the paintings that he just looked at, as if the Nazis had organized the room in true exhibit form complete with photo-reproductions that one could take home and admire. Photos of 'decadent' works? How strange! But then, life is stranger than fiction, non?