Modigliani's "Seated Man with a Cane" up for grabs

by Marc Masurovsky

[Editor's note: This blog piece originally appeared on November 15, 2011. It has been updated to reflect additional news and research regarding the "Seated Man with a Cane," by Amedeo Modigliani, in 2016, on June 9, 2018, and on 4 February 2024]

Seated Man with a Cane, Amédéo Modigliani
Source: Courthouse News Service

The first day of November 2011 began with a headline-grabbing story about a painting by Amédéo Modigliani, "Seated Man with a Cane." According to the prevailing news accounts in the Anglo-American press, a Frenchman of Jewish descent by the name of Oscar Stettiner had lived in Paris before the advent of the Second World War. Instead of waiting for the Wehrmacht to march into Paris, Stettiner did what a third of the Parisian populace did—he fled. Before going south, Stettiner parted with his property, including works of art, never to see them again.

The plaintiff in this case is Philippe Maestracci who was born in the Dordogne in 1944 where his grandfather, Oscar Stettiner, had sought refuge and remained throughout the Second World War in a small town called La Force.

The news reports indicate that, at some point in 1941, a man by the name of Marcel Philippon became the official overseer of Stettiner’s assets as a logical consequence of being of Jewish descent and being specifically targeted for that reason by German and French anti-Jewish ordinances and decrees.

On July 3, 1944, the Modigliani painting was offered up for sale at an auction in Paris.

In 1946, Oscar Stettiner initiated proceedings to recover his painting. He died in 1948.

More than sixty years later, the Modigliani painting was offered up for sale at Sotheby’s by its current owner, Helly Nahmad, which triggered the current claim by Oscar Stettiner's sole surviving heir, Philippe Maestracci.

The following text should be viewed as a historical consultation provided free of charge to the parties warring over the painting. If they get no benefit out of this, the fault is entirely theirs.

Before even entering into a critical analysis of the facts as they have been presented to the public, the news reports contradict one another, thereby making it very difficult to develop an accurate version of a now-familiar story of spoliation of Jewish cultural assets, recycling on the wartime art market, and postwar attempts at recovering the stolen cultural property.

Most news reports, which repeat Courthouse News Service and the British Mail, indicate that “the Nazis appointed Marcel Philippon a temporary administrator to sell Stettiner’s property…” ArtInfo, on the other hand, gets it all wrong by indicating that the Nazis placed the Modigliani painting “in the care of” Marcel Philippon in 1939, which is a bit nonsensical since the Germans entered Paris in mid-June 1940.

The complaint itself does not shed additional light on what went wrong during the war. However, it does make several historical errors which are not helpful. It alleges that “the Nazis adopted a practice and a policy of despoiling Jewish families of property located in the Occupied Zone by forced sales.” It would have been more intelligent to indicate that the Nazi authorities, referred to as the German Military Administration (Militärbefehlshaber für Frankreich) shared the burden of enacting and enforcing anti-Jewish decrees with the collaborationist regime of Marshal Philippe Pétain, whose government was based in Vichy. It was Vichy that enacted the most sweeping anti-Jewish laws, not the Germans. Those laws established a sequence of economic restrictions aimed at ostracizing and impoverishing the Jews living in France at the time of the German invasion. The turnkey moment was the establishment of the “Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives” (The General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs or “CGQJ”) in April 1941 whose main purpose was the wholesale transfer of property from Jewish ownership to Aryan hands in consultation with and sometimes in opposition to German dicta.

Le Commissariat général aux question juive, place des Petits-Peres, l´ancenne banque Léopold Louis-Dreyfus
Source: Wikipedia via Bundesarchiv

Where does Marcel Philippon fit into this strategy? According to the complaint, “the Nazis would appointe [sic] a Temporary Administrator (“Commissaire Gérant”) to marshal and sell Jewish property and to turn the proceeds over to the Third Reich.” This is really where matters get very sticky.

Before the establishment of the CGQJ, the German authorities began to appoint overseers to manage companies and businesses owned by Jews. The individuals appointed in this capacity were known as commissaires gérants. The title should be interpreted literally: their function was to manage businesses whose owners had fled, hence the word “Gérant” or “manager.” The ultimate fate of these businesses became entangled in arduous negotiations between the German occupation authorities and the newly-minted CGQJ since the Vichy authorities had laid claim to any assets owned by Jews on French soil, especially if they were French nationals.

The Administrateur Provisoire is an invention of the Vichy government. Loosely translated as interim overseers, their function was to manage confiscated Jewish assets for the purpose of either liquidating them or aryanizing them. In the case of Oscar Stettiner, the complaint raises a number of questions which need to be researched thoroughly:

1. Stettiner -- assuming that we are talking about the same one--allegedly owned a gallery which had been founded by his family in the second half of the nineteenth century. If his gallery was still active in the fall of 1939, it would have been placed under the care of a “commissaire gérant”, assuming that the Germans had gotten to it first. Had they not, the Vichy government would have seized the opportunity and appointed its own overseer, hence the competitive nature of control of Jewish assets between the Germans and the French.
    
2. Marcel Philippon, as an interim overseer, had to abide by the instructions of the CGQJ and/or the Germans, depending on who actually appointed him. If he was in charge of both Stettiner’s personal and corporate assets, a determination would have to be made about how best to handle the seized property. It could be a mix of transfer of ownership to Aryan hands and outright liquidation through auctions or sealed bid offers. If there is a paper trail, it would be in the records of the CGQJ, archivally known as AJ38, the acronym given to this notorious collection by the French National Archives.
    
3. the sale of the Modigliani painting three years after its placement under the management of Philippon is of concern, because it is difficult to understand, although it is not inconceivable, how and why Philippon would have waited for so long to sell the Modigliani, knowing that the wartime Paris market was thriving and that Modiglianis were easy to sell at a fair price due to their desirability both in contemporaneous French and foreign art circles. For reasons of due diligence, both parties should consult the d’Atri records at the Archives of American Art which contain the notes of Mr. D’Atri who was busy assembling a catalogue raisonné of Modigliani’s works but failed to complete it. However, his notes and ledgers are enlightening since he presumably inventoried every oil painting produced by the master until his untimely death.
    
4. the postwar claim gives me heartburn. Indeed, there is no indication that Mr. Stettiner filed an official restitution claim with the French government. The records of the Commission de récupération artistique (CRA) make no mention of Oscar Stettiner or of his gallery. The records of the Office des Biens et Intérêts Privés (OBIP) make no mention of either Oscar, Maud, or Jacques Stettiner. However, in this particular instance, the current inventories are incomplete. Both parties in this litigation owe it to themselves to contact the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at La Courneuve (Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et Européennes or MAEE) and request any compensation or restitution claims filed under the various names of the victims as presented in the complaint. If Oscar Stettiner decided to “go it alone” and seek personal justice outside the sphere of State-sponsored claims through judicial proceedings, the Paris courts and especially the Tribunal de la Seine and the Tribunal de Première Instance might be the proper jurisdictions where a docket might have survived.
    
5. forced sales in Vichy France: The French government has never admitted to the existence of so-called “forced sales”, assigning that moniker to Nazi ill-doings. Liquidation sales of Jewish-owned property did occur on a weekly basis throughout occupied France, mostly in the Paris region, but the mechanisms used to recycle Jewish-owned property were far more complex than meets the eye, especially when cultural assets were involved. This matter needs to be seriously examined in light of the extensive historical documentation surrounding the wartime Paris art market and the recycling of confiscated Jewish property.

Parting thoughts:

The search for justice through claims for restitution of cultural assets forcibly removed from the hands of owners of Jewish descent requires that those who represent the aggrieved parties should pay close attention to history as it unfolded and reflect that history in their argumentation. Without such scrupulous and diligent attention to the historical truth, history is rewritten and the damage is done in the courts and in the minds of those who must hear these cases and make an informed decision about the validity of the claim brought before them.

That is not to say that the Stettiner issue is invalid. Far from that, but the historical investigative work must be brought to a forceful conclusion in order to allow all parties involved in this and similar conflicts to reach an outcome that is anchored in historical truth and ethical conduct.

Otherwise, much like “Groundhog Day”, we keep on repeating history over and over again.

Is it too much to ask that the parties involved in the dispute over the Modigliani painting come together and ascertain the facts as they occurred in the name of history, justice, and the truth? No more, no less. It would be reprehensible for Helly Nahmad to proceed with the sale of the painting because there is a taint on it and that taint must be washed off.


2016 update:

The Toronto-based Mondex Corp. now represents Mr. Maestracci, the closest kin to Oscar Stettiner in its attempt to recover the "Seated Man with a Cane", an oil painting by Modigliani.

The "Seated Man with a Cane" by Amedeo Modigliani has been located in the Geneva Freeport where Swiss authorities ordered its seizure.  The shell company under which it was registered is in fact owned by the Nahmad family which means that, by several steps removed, Nahmad is the current possessor. Or so the Swiss prosecutors believe together with US investigators.

The challenge now is to see whether Mr. Maestracci and Mondex can prevail and assert their claim over the Modigliani painting.  Its history remains murky.

Meanwhile....

The provenance of the "Seated Man with a Cane" raises questions, which beg for more meticulous and forensic research:

Repeated inspections and examinations of the records of Alfredo d'Atri, an art dealer and collector based in Paris, France, who was an expert on Modigliani's life and works, failed to produce any tangible information on "Seated Man with a Cane."  The only reference to the painting was a photograph of the painting when it was loaned by a Mr. Stettiner to the 1930 Venice Biennale. D'atri's ledger of paintings by Modigliani does not include any information on this work nor does it mention it.

In other words, there is a 14-year gap between the only public display of the "Seated Man with a Cane" and the purported sale of the painting in wartime Paris on July 3, 1944. It needs to be "filled."

"Seated Man with a Cane"

Page from the Venice Biennale catalogue, 1930

Note: the black and white photograph of the "Seated Man with a Cane" and the page from the 1930 Venice Biennale catalogue where the painting was exhibited come from the Archives of American Art, in Washington, DC.

Update from June 9, 2018

On April 18, 2018, New York State Judge Eileen Bransten denied Nahmad's motion to dismiss the case against him for the Modigliani painting. On June 5, 2018, Helly Nahmad, current possessor of the "Seated Man with a Cane," by Amadeo Modigliani, filed a request for judgment with the New York State Supreme Court to dismiss Mr. Maestracci's complaint against Nahmad, and to award monetary damages to Nahmad in the event of a ruling favorable to Maestracci equal to the value of the painting at time of purchase plus interest.

Source: Verified answer and counterclaim re "George W. Gowen as Limited Ancillary Administrator of the Estate of Oscar Stettiner, against Helly Nahmad Gallery, Inc., Helly Nahmad, (New York) individually, David Nahmad, and International Art Center, SA." NYSCEF Doc. No. 1819.

Update from February 4, 2024

13 years have passed, come and gone, since we first heard of the "Seated Man with a Cane" by Amadeo Modigliani. As of today, Mr. Nahmad remains the happy current possessor of a painting which has been labeled as "looted." You would think that in its many boasts Mondex Corp. would have seen fit to release part of the historical evidence making it clear to Mr. Nahmad that it would be best for him to surrender the painting to Mr. Maestracci, the purported heir of Mr. Stettiner, alleged victim of this crime of spoliation at the hands of the Vichy government and the German occupation force.

In 2020, the Art Newspaper published an update on the case putting forth new evidence from the French archives showing that the painting was clearly looted. A note on a document signaling the painting as stolen and being sought in America. Is that it? 

I'd gladly offer a bottle of champagne (I get to choose the brand) to anyone willing to come forth with the damning and incontrovertible evidence against Mr. Nahmad. I doubt that the offer would bear fruit because, at this stage, no one is convinced that there is a case to be made and that Mondex has convinced a distant relative of Mr. Stettiner to sign on to a restitution claim for a painting worth today upwards of 20 million dollars. Another high-stakes game played by the new bad boys and girls of the restitution industry. At the end, claimants suffer, the restitution process gets trivialized and maligned by the very people who should take heed of how serious we are to do justice and fix--even symbolically--the crime of cultural plunder.

At this point, it would be foolish to take bets on a losing case.

Exhibit of works of art that are not works of art

Please refer to the 10 July 2011 post entitled “A work of art is not a work of art”

Here are some of the 29 works of art which were ruled unfit by the French government restitution commission (CRA) to be considered as works of art. They were handed over to the OBIP in mid-1947.  None of the owners could be identified since the works were seized during M-Aktion by units linked to the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in the Paris region.

One can only assume that the esthetic judgment of the CRA was critical in making the final decision to exclude these works from the broad category of “work of art.”

You be the judge…

Maurice Wagemans, "Port de pêche"
Source: ERR Project via Bundesarchiv

Paul Désiré Trouillebert, "Paysage"
Source: ERR Project via Bundesarchive

France, 19ème siècle, “Fleurs”
Source: ERR Project via Bundesarchiv

Jacques de La Joue, "La Botanique"
Source: ERR Project via Bundesarchiv

B. Genzmer, "Fonctionnaire à la porte d’une maison"
Source: ERR Project via Bundesarchiv

A work of art is not a work of art

SEL531
Source: ERR Project via Bundesarchiv

On 30 May 1947, the French “Commission de récupération artistique” (CRA) handed over 29 works and objects of art to the “Office des Biens et Intérêts Privés” (OBIP) because it ruled that they could not be considered as being part of the “Patrimoine National.” The CRA’s decision was founded on a definition of what constitutes a “work of art” determined at a 2 November 1945 session of the CRA. In other words, the CRA came up with its own definition of what a “work of art” is …. or is not.

The “Patrimoine National” is literally the “national heritage,” a fluid concept applied to any item that is deemed to be incorporated into the heritage of a nation. Although this is not the time to engage in a full-scaled discussion of what is worthy of being considered as part of the national heritage, suffice it to say that the definition is highly malleable and subject to the fleeting whims of governments. However, once an object enters the “patrimoine national,” it is unlikely that it leaves it…ever. If the item turns out to have been looted during a military conflict or, worse, an act of genocide, regardless, restitution is nigh impossible because the “patrimoine national” trumps the rights of individuals if they seek restitution of items that have become part of the heritage of a nation.

None of the items could be officially linked to a particular owner as they were labeled by the Germans as MA-B (Möbel-Aktion Bilder) or Unb (Unbekannt)… except for one.

Slight oversight on the part of the French government or just plain sloppiness?

The item in question was labeled “KS 538 – 6432.” It was described as a cartel signed by the French painter Prud’hon and entitled “Femme au bain.”

KS 538-6432
Source: MCCP Database via Bundesarchiv

The number 6432 refers to a number assigned by US authorities at the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP). The MCCP card for item 6432 identified the painting by Prud’hon as a “bathing nymph”. There was another number assigned to the painting: SEL 531. 

SEL 531
Source: ERR Project via NARA

SEL is an acronym assigned by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in Paris for any item looted from the Seligmann family. Therefore, the allegedly ownerless Prud’hon painting belonged to Seligmann whose antiques business at the Place Vendôme in Paris was thoroughly looted beginning in early July 1940.  The painting was restituted to the Jacques Seligmann Company on 15 January 1948 and its legal representative, René Fulda.

Let’s go back to the initial sentence which indicates that the CRA did not consider the painting to be part of the “Patrimoine National.” What would have happened if the CRA had ruled the Seligmann painting as belonging to the “Patrimoine national”? It would have been incorporated into a French museum collection. What about the rights of the Seligmann family to recover this work of art even if the CRA considered it to be part of the “Patrimoine National”? One has to wonder if the CRA even bothered to notify families whose works were deemed to be worthy of inclusion in the “Patrimoine National”?

More importantly, how does a French government agency decide whether or not a work of art is a work of art?

MNR (Musées Nationaux Récupération) Notes—R 6 P « Femme au turban, » by Marie Laurencin

R 6 P
Source: Ministère de la culture - Musées Nationaux Récupération

Research always begets more research. It’s a bottomless, endless process. One has to be very strong to say: “Stop!”

Case in point: R 6 P of the MNR series at the French Ministry of Culture, the series that contains those works and objets d’art in the custody of the French government until someone comes by and claims them. Meanwhile, they have been incorporated into France’s State-run collections. Not a bad deal.

R 6 P is actually a painting by Marie Laurencin, which she completed in 1941. It’s called “Femme au turban”. Other documents indicate that it is “Jeune fille au turban” or a “Tête de jeune fille.” The young woman does indeed wear a turban and also a string of rather large pearls.

The painting is currently on display at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

R 6 P
Source: MCCP Database via Bundesarchiv

For anyone interested in delving deeper into the sordid past of these MNRs, here is some advice. When you read that the “Commission de choix des oeuvres d’art” selected the item on 10 December 1949,” this is what it means: a commission was established by the National Museum Administration of France (Direction des Musées Nationaux) to ferret out works and objets d’art in the Allied zones of occupation of Germany and Austria which could be construed as having been removed from France between June 1940 and the summer and fall of 1944. The word “choix” is critical because it entails selection. Selection for whom? Well, selection for French museums, that’s for whom. We are not discussing repatriation for the sake of restitution. The “Commission de choix” is only interested in picking out items which are “French” so that they can be considered for inclusion in French State collections. Is there a recognizable owner to whom the object could be returned? Apparently, that does not enter into the discussion.

The other item that is of note is a number. In this case the number is 45989. It is referred to as a German number from Munich. Or put more elegantly, it is a number assigned to the object by the people working at the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP) between 1945 and 1950, the main facility in the US zone of occupation in Germany where looted cultural property was sifted, re-organized, examined, and ultimately repatriated to countries from where they had been removed so as to facilitate their restitution. In the case of Marie Laurencin’s “Femme au turban,” the MCCP number coincides with an item matching this painting which entered the MCCP on 13 January 1948.

The MCCP descriptive index card gives very little information as to how the object crossed into the Reich in the first place. We know only of a Mr. Brandl who was forced to bring it to the MCCP “for examination.” There is also an indication that the item had been stored at a depot in Laufen.

The details provided by the French government for R 6 P omit any reference to this Mr. Brandl nor do they seem too concerned as to how the object left France.

R 6 P
Source: MCCP Database via Bundesarchiv

A search on Brandl in the MCCP database reveals that this Mr. Brandl brought to the Collecting Point “for examination” 94 items. One of the Brandl cards relates to a painting by Corot which was confiscated in France by SS-Mann Brandl, a detail that was absent from all other cards where Brandl’s name was mentioned. Not only that but we also find out that there is a Capt. Doubinsky associated with Brandl’s name. Capt. Doubinsky was the deputy of Rose Valland in the French zone of occupation at French military headquarters in Baden-Baden. Hence, after some basic poking around, we do find out some additional useful details about the holder of the cultural objects, including the Marie Laurencin painting. An enterprising uniformed SS soldier who was interrogated by Rose Valland’s deputy, Captain Doubinsky. And yet, we still do not know if these 94 objects, including the Marie Laurencin, were owned by one or more individuals. A clue to that effect is given to us by another card associated with Brandl. Munich Card No. 48804 pertains to a work by an artist named Béatrice How. The purported owner of the piece prior to SS Mann Brandl’s act of confiscation was “Mme. Veuve Lucien Raphael” in Paris. A cursory check tells us that there was a man by the name of Lucien Raphael who was a banker and who died in Paris in July 1943. Of course, there were probably a great many men named Lucien Raphael in Paris, but then again, could this be the same one? At the very least, this item—MCCP 48804—is associated with a previous owner.

Tentative conclusion:

R 6 P was seized or purchased—but most likely seized—by an SS Mann named Brandl at some point before the Germans abandoned Paris to its insurgents, its citizens, and liberating forces led in part by Général Leclerc. SS Mann Brandl also brought home to Germany 93 other items, which included more than a dozen Impressionist works, furniture, objets d’art, and sculptures.

Captain Doubinsky, Rose Valland’s assistant, interrogated him at some point in early 1949, following the summons issued to Brandl to bring his loot to the MCCP “for examination.”

At least one victim was associated with an item in Brandl’s possession.

We do not know how all of this unfolded. But we do know that the family of Lucien Raphael filed claims after the war, obtained restitution of items in 1946 and 1950. The correspondence between Lucien Raphael’s son, Claude, and Rose Valland reveals that many items were still not returned in 1960.

Further research would have to include:

1. the interrogation of SS Mann Brandl by Captain Doubinsky which might be located in the so-called Baden-Baden archival records of the Rose Valland files at the French ministry of foreign Affairs at the Courneuve, north of Paris.
    
2. the restitution files of Veuve Lucien Raphael in the Commission de récupération artistique (CRA) and the restitution files at the Office des Biens et Intérêts Privés (OBIP). All of these can be found at the Courneuve archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Postscript: the fact that Marie Laurencin painted the “Jeune fille au turban” in 1941 is worth noting. She lived the war years in Paris, unmolested.  Although her apartment was requisitioned in spring of 1944, so were many others in the late stages of the occupation of Paris.  Some of her closest friends, including Flora Groult and René Gimpel, professed that she held anti-Semitic views. Although this has nothing to do with the aforementioned issue of R 6 P in the MNR series, it is indicative of the fact that the dominant color of plunder in wartime France is a deep shade of grey, neither black nor white.

Restitution and ‘restitution’: Some thoughts on the MNR problem in France

by Marc Masurovsky
edited and updated on 5 July 2025

Restitution involves the act of returning a stolen object to the owner who was the victim of the theft.

However, if a gallery sells a painting to a citizen of the German Reich who then takes it home across the Rhine, does that constitute theft, especially if the object itself is proven not to have been stolen in the first place?

When the French claims agency, the Office des Biens et Intérêts Privés (OBIP) transferred a painting to the Selection Committee (Commission de choix) of the Louvre in December 1951, it implied that the Selection Committee and/or the Louvre had lost the painting in the first place and justice was being served by incorporating the painting into French State collections. In this particular instance, the painting, Vénus, Bacchus, Cérès, amours et saphirs, by Frans Floris, had been sold in 1941 to a leading German agent—Karl Haberstock--through a gallery owned by Hugo Engel in German-occupied France. Although the item had not been stolen prior to sale, the postwar French government nevertheless treated the work as a stolen object. One year after the liberation of North Africa by Anglo-American troops and contingents of the French Resistance in November 1942, the French National Liberation Committee had declared that all transactions on French territory since June 1940 were deemed null and void, an act which paved the way for a complex and lopsided campaign of restitution and compensation in the years following the Liberation of France in the second half of 1944. For all intents and purposes, the act of declaring a transaction null and void conferred on the transacted object the taint of illegality.

Let’s pretend for a second that France had not been invaded by Nazi Germany. Hugo Engel still would have offered the Fioris painting to Karl Haberstock, a Nazi cultural agent, who then returned to the Reich with it, acting on behalf of his superiors in the Nazi hierarchy. The French government would not have objected to the sale and departure of this object from French territory. But all of that changed with the German invasion of France and the subsequent wholesale requisitions, acts of plunder and spoliation that befell those living within its now truncated borders. The Floris painting was no longer just another painting being offered for sale in a Paris gallery. It was now treated as if it belonged to France, in other words, its acquisition and transfer to Reich territory was tantamount to a forcible removal of the painting from the bosom of that organic national entity known as France. In sum, a war of aggression and conquest against France waged by Nazi Germany had transformed the privately-owned Fioris painting into a State-controlled object that earned it the full protection and consideration of the French State. A curious turn of alchemy which afforded France to lay claims in the postwar to a significant haul of art that had emanated from its private art market and been acquired by individuals who had transported their cultural purchases outside its borders into the Reich.

The Allies countenanced this conversion of private commercial transactions under Nazi rule into illicit acts of property transfers, thus equating them with actual acts of plunder and misappropriation. Regardless of how one judges this policy, it has produced, among other things, an awkward category of objects known as the MNRs—Musées Nationaux Récupération. Many of the MNRs fall into the category of the Fioris painting—acquired in the open private art market during the German occupation and removed from French territory by the purchaser. There is no evidence that the Floris painting was, in fact, incorporated into the MNR category since it is absent from the French government's website devoted to those objects.

The question now becomes: should the MNR’s even exist since they are as close to war booty as one can get, save for those which are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, plundered objects? The maintenance of this ambiguity forces us to consider that all objects acquired in France—fair and square—during the period of Vichy rule and German occupation—from June 1940 to the fall of 1944—should be considered as illicit transfers of property until otherwise stated. One can’t have one’s cake and eat it too, but it appears that, for the past eighty years, that is precisely what has occurred, thus casting an inexorable taint of wartime theft and illegality on an unimaginable number of cultural objects that have since made it into countless collections on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Update on 5 July 2025

Since this article was written in 2011, the French government has changed its tune regarding the so-called MNR works and objects of which they are the custodians until the rightful owner(s) state their claims for their restitution, historical evidence in hand. Close to 50 objects have been returned since 2011, a small number but a significant leap forward when compared to the prior 60 years since the MNRs became a "thing."

The French government is still unwilling to admit that most of the works that fall under that label are not Jewish losses. They are simply works and objects that changed hands under the pseudo-legality established by the Vichy regime under German military occupation. Neighboring countries under the Nazi yoke also saw their art markets fructify and grow as if nothing untoward had happened. Another way of saying that the art market is impervious to the vagaries of history. As long as someone has something to sell, there will be a buyer willing to plunk down the requisite sum of money to acquire it in good faith.

Looking back, I speculate that the decision by the French Resistance to declare all transactions null and void may have been a principled, although ill-thought out declaration not realizing how potentially sweeping and destructive its literal enforcement would have been in the postwar years. It foreshadows to some extent Law 59 which was passed in the US Zone of Occupation in Germany in order to hold accountable current possessors of objects acquired during the Third Reich. There is nothing wrong with making the last owner/possessor accountable as an enforcement to establish the circumstances of an acquisition during the commission of an act of genocide.