French masterpieces for sale in postwar Germany

by Marc Masurovsky

From a business standpoint, art dealers do not run charities. They buy, sell, trade works and objects of art to make money, and, hopefully, lots of it. The dealer’s instinct is—you guessed it—to look for opportunities, expand networks of informants and clients, make deals, and jump on them before the competition does. As a result, the oftentimes legendary rivalries that arise between art dealers shape and transform the art world as well as the business of art. Every now and then, their acquisitions and sales influence the taste of current and future generations. A thrilling wave to ride but one that comes with a heavy price.

For those dealers who are willing to go all the way, they may assign ethics and History to a backseat in order to unleash their thirst for acquiring unique, expensive and (maybe) transformative objects wherever they can be found hopefully at a low enough price. During the Nazi era (1933-1945), dealers made a pact with the Devil by ignoring the heinous nature of hate-based political systems rising across the European continent and elsewhere. They saw how the discriminatory policies unfurled by the New Nazi/Fascist Order could generate immense opportunities for them as a result of the involuntary disgorgement of valuable works of art on the art market by the victims of Nazi/Fascist violence and persecution.

The dealers, collectors, agents, cultural officials and brokers who invested themselves in acquiring and selling Nazi victims’ cultural property did so willingly, eyes open and focused on the prize. And it so happens that even dealers who fell victim to the rapacity of Nazis’ covetous seizure of their inventories between 1933 and 1945 also saw opportunities for themselves and their colleagues as the genocidal dust of the Nazi-driven Holocaust was barely settling across war-torn Europe. Even if their desire to acquire such works might have been guided by the best of intentions…as art dealers.

To wit, Paul Rosenberg, an iconic figure of the international art world in Europe and the United States, had a keen visionary eye for high-quality art. He exercised his skills with brilliance on both sides of the Atlantic. On December 12, 1946, Rosenberg penned a two-page proposal to the Foreign Division of the US Treasury Department in Washington, DC, regarding the disposition of works of art located in the US zone of occupation of Germany (viz., Bavaria) which belonged to impoverished collectors. Here are the relevant portions:

“There are, in Germany, many great art collections…which include internationally famous French paintings…there might be a possibility that the owners of these paintings, due to lack of funds, might be interested in selling their collections. [Some] are celebrated masterpieces…We, as art dealers, are interested in these pictures…If this is possible, many of these great masterpieces would be acquired..by American collectors and…be donated to American museums or artistic institutions, thereby adding to their greatness.”

The “we” refers to a group of art dealers and their galleries based in New York who shared Rosenberg’s feelings and agreed to contact the US government and encourage the US military occupation authorities in Germany to enact policies that would loosen up export restrictions from the former war zone and allow art dealers and collectors to resume business as usual. The desire to “liberate” heaps of cultural objects from the shackles of Allied military policy and (re)fuel the engine of the international art market appears to be the main motivator behind this proposal. It is unclear whether this proposal was accepted, but it would not have sat well with American cultural officials who were working around the clock in Washington and in liberated Europe to ensure that art collections and individual objects located in liberated areas would be prioritized for restitution and not be offered for sale.

 In June 1946, the celebrated Roberts Commission committed harakiri and put itself out of business, confident that, to a large extent (although the proof for this has always been elusive) its leaders opined that very little looted art had entered the United States.  Before doing so, almost to legitimize its own demise, the Roberts Commission had successfully revoked Treasury Directive TD 51072, a key instrument in the fight against illegal imports of looted property into the United States. The directive was issued on June 8, 1944, two days after D-Day, under sections 3(a) and 5(b) of the Trade with the Enemy Act. Its aim was to restrict the importation into the US of any art object with a value exceeding 5000 dollars or is of artistic, historic and scholarly interest irrespective of monetary value.” The method of restriction was sequestration of objects falling under the aegis of the Directive. The Roberts Commission's job was to review the documentation accompanying these sequestered objects and either approve or refuse their release under a license issued by Treasury.

It should come as no surprise that Paul Rosenberg's proposal came at a time when some parts of the US government were no longer focused on restituting victims' property but on returning to business as usual as quickly as possible even if it meant releasing art objects from Europe into the United States with no filters and no way of vetting imports for evidence of loot.

Source:

Paul Rosenberg to Foreign Department, US Treasury Department, Washington, DC, 12 December 1946, 2 pages, Enclosure III, Box 28, Lot 62D4 (Ardelia Hall files), RG59, NACP, College Park, MD.

Art exports from Europe to the Western Hemisphere

by Marc Masurovsky

Applications for export pases for works of art, page 1

An innocuous list of works and objects of art has been widely available for study since historical records about art looting and restitution during the Nazi era become accessible either by on-site visits to leading archives or after their digitization on the platform known as fold3.com.

The list is entitled: “Applications for export passes for works of art.” All of the works which their owners have desired to export the Western Hemisphere were acquired in or came from areas known as “enemy territory.” This moniker targeted the following countries: Austria/Vienna, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Holland/Netherlands, France/Paris, “unoccupied France”, Romania.

The applicants submitted their export petitions from the following places: France, Lisbon, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland. They filed their export applications between 23/1/40 and 5/5/44, the vast majority having been submitted in 1941 and 1942, and only one in 1944.

The dates at which the objects were “taken from enemy territory” ostensibly to the places from which the export applications were then filed ranged from as early as 1934 and as late as 1941.

The objects themselves are a mix of works by Old Masters and 19th century French artists.

If we do our due diligence in a professional and non-judgmental way, all of these works need to be given extra scrutiny to eliminate any suspicion that they might have been misappropriated under Nazi rule aimed at Jews and their property. Many of the applicants’ names are well-known Jewish collectors who escaped from Europe or remained in neutral territories until the Nazi/Fascist dust had settled (Paul Graupe, Sommergut, Brunschnig, Francisca Heinemann, among others). Still, it’s worth asking about the provenance of works of art removed from Nazi Germany between 1934 and 1940, from Austria as of 1938, from France as of fall of 1940, out of Romania in 1941. With regards to the Netherlands, the objects were removed in 1938. That does not necessarily mean that their ownership history is completely clean since they could have been subject to illicit displacements in Germany and transferred to the Netherlands for sale to unwitting purchasers. We simply do not know. And that’s where research comes in handy.

A number of the works have interwar provenance information that removes the cloud (a Bauchant painting acquired from Jeanne Bucher in spring of 1940, a Bonnard acquired from the artist in 1940). But, as in the case of Paul Graupe while he was still in charge of an auction house in Berlin in 1935, one should be cautious because he did sell confiscated Jewish property. Therefore, a “Madonna with Child” attributed to Cima de Conegliano which Walter Wolf acquired from him in 1935 should be screened further. What about a Matisse painting acquired by André Weill “from Vollard” in May 1940? Vollard had died unexpectedly on the eve of World War II, and Martin Fabiani and Etienne Bignou, two notorious figures of the soon-to-be illegal art trade in German-occupied France, had imposed themselves as co-executors of the massive estate left by Ambroise Vollard? Should this object be reassessed based on the turbulent history surrounding the estate?

Even if all of these works ultimately pass the “plunder smell test”, we should keep in mind that the Roberts Commission and its tweed-wearing, pipe-smoking, art historians and curators from distinguished American museums, did not have much information to go by when assessing the origins of these works before or after they entered the United States, except for the fact that they were the property of mostly well-established Jewish collectors in Europe who were fleeing for their lives from the neutral countries which they were able to reach.

When faced with such lists, don’t just dismiss them and assume that everything is fine. Do not give them the benefit of the doubt. The snapshot of the objects' trajectory that this 22-page list encapsulates becomes part of the object’s provenance or history in time and space and should be recorded as such.

Applications for export passes for works of art, page 2

Duly noted.

TD 51072

by Marc Masurovsky

Treasury Directive TD 51072 was passed on June 8, 1944, two days after D-Day, under sections 3(a) and 5(b) of the Trade with the Enemy Act. Its aim was to restrict the importation into the US of any art object with a value exceeding 5000 dollars or is of artistic, historic and scholarly interest irrespective of monetary value.” The method of restriction was sequestration of objects falling under the aegis of the Directive. The Roberts Commission was charged with reviewing the documentation accompanying these sequestered objects and either approving or refusing their release under a license issued by Treasury.

The directive applied to any art object that had changed hands since March 12, 1938, two days after the absorption of Austria into the German Reich, known as the Anschluss. In other words, any art object subjected to “internal plunder” from 1933 to 1938, was exempted de facto from the Directive.

Further exemptions to the TD weakened its impact upon enactment.  For instance, objects imported from the United Kingdom and its dominions were exempted from TD 51072. Also, objects coming in from so-called neutral or non-belligerent countries were exempted from inspection at the US Border. However, importers were still required to file two separate forms, a TFE-1 (license to import) and FFC-168 (questionnaire) [FFC-Foreign Funds Control was the main investigative arm of the Treasury and the predecessor to the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the US Department of Treasury]. These forms were designed to shed light on the origin of the objects and the circumstances of their acquisition prior to their entry into the US.

The loophole created by the “artistic, historic or scholarly” value of the object meant that cultural objects viewed as “ordinary” might be allowed in without further ado. What the US authorities together with the museum professionals of the Roberts Commission did not realize is that the vast majority of art objects looted by the Axis fell under that category of “ordinariness.”

The impact of TD 51072 on cultural imports into the US was limited owing to these many exemptions. Also, the Roberts Commission worked hard to dilute its impact and eventually lobbied the Treasury to have the directive revoked on grounds that there was no evidence of loot entering the US. A note here: the Roberts commission would not have known how to identify a looted cultural or artistic object if if it was staring at them, as there were no exhaustive listings of what had been looted by the Axis at the time the Directive was enacted. The Roberts Commission succeeded in getting the TD 51072 revoked and, feeling that its work was done, voted itself out of existence in July 1946, confident that business as usual should resume post haste.

Wartime art trade between Caracas, Venezuela, and New York

In September 1944, the Navy Censorship office in New York notified William Burke, of the Frick Art Reference Library, that a group of 30 paintings coming through Caracas, Venezuela, had been offered for sale to an art dealer in New York.

At first blush, the list consisted of a high-powered compendium of major European Old Masters (Tintoretto, El Greco, Tiepolo, Rubens, Annibale Carracci) and a handful of 19th century masters (Lawrence and Manet chief among them).

A second look at the list would make anyone wonder if these paintings were for real or not owing to their valuations. On the low end you could get a “Landscape” by Albert Cuyp for 375 pounds sterling. On the high end, El Greco’s “Virgin Mourning the death of Christ,” would cost you a hefty 22,000 pounds sterling.

An expert with the Roberts Commission evaluated the list and his conclusions have withstood the test of time: the paintings were either copies of originals hanging in museums, or they were misattributed, or else they came from obscure, heretofore unknown collections, because many of them could not be located in the extant art-historical literature. For those he could find, the originals were in established European collections.

The main concern at Navy Censorship and the Roberts Commission was that, for those paintings valued in excess of 5000 US dollars, a special permit would have to be obtained through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in order for the works to enter the United States legally. This import restriction had been put into place in the early days of the Second World War to allow the US government through its Customs Bureaus to vet incoming items for any sign of suspicious origin (read, looted).

This September 1944 Navy Censorship document typified the nature of raw information streaming into wartime New York and Washington.  Its use value could be viewed as marginal due to the lack of information that it contained on the works themselves--no sign of previous ownership, unknown consignor in Caracas. But, when confronted with a later piece of intelligence, the Frick document began to make more sense.

On November 25, 1944, the US Office of Censorship intercepted a telephone conversation between Jose Acquavella in Caracas and Nicolas Acquavella, an established art dealer on 57th Street in New York.

Conversation between Nicolas Acquavella (New York) and Jose Acquavella (Caracas)
Source: NARA

During that conversation, Jose and Nicolas expressed anger over news reports that the paintings sold by their New York gallery were copies of originals hanging in the Louvre in Paris. Although most probably true, the clincher to the story is that one of Nicolas Acquavella’s clients, Manuel J. Santaella, a Venezuelan politician, had expressed interest in a painting by Rubens which Nicolas Acquavella was selling for about $10,000. However, the painting was located in Caracas under the care of Jose Acquavella. Coincidence? One of the paintings on the September 1944 Navy Censorship list was by Rubens and titled, “The Adoration of the Magi,” at a value of 15,000 pounds sterling.

Although the two American intelligence documents may not be directly connected, the coincidences force us to consider that there is a relationship between the September 1944 reporting of the list of 30 paintings coming through Caracas and the late November 1944 conversation between the Acquavellas.

Many plundered families in Europe of middle-class origin had acquired copies of works produced by known and lesser-known artists in part as a status symbol, in part as a way of expressing cultural preferences, in part because these works were far more affordable than the originals. Those works, together with victims' household goods, were summarily confiscated by Nazi authorities and sold at auction across Nazi-occupied Europe.

The fact that 30 paintings, even if all were copies, were being offered for sale to a gallery in New York via Caracas, was a good illustration of the extent of wartime trade in works of art coming from Europe, regardless of their pedigree and museum-worthiness. As we have seen time and time again, good copies of original masterpieces were never frowned upon by museums, as witnessed in Buenos Aires.  Thus, the trail of missing works coming from Europe could actually lead us either to a Latin American museum or to the lower-tiered art market in New York.

Ardelia Hall

Ardelia Hall (1899-1979) is the quintessential personification of a one-woman campaign to track down looted art and restitute thousands of these missing works to their rightful owners.  Her art restitution mission lasted for 16 years, from 1946 to 1962,while she served as a cultural affairs officer at the US Department of State.  A trained art historian she specialized in ancient Chinese art and before the war worked at the Department of Asian Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts under whose auspices she participated in archaeological digs in China during the early 1930s.  After a brief stint at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Ardelia Hall entered the government as a cultural officer of the US Department of State.  In June 1946, she received the files of the recently-disbanded Roberts Commission, a wartime American organization that laid down the framework for American attempts to locate, recover, and return looted works of art in Europe and prevent their entry into the United States.  Overnight, she became the point person on art restitution in the US government.  Ardelia Hall managed to keep the issue of art restitution alive while most politicians and career government officials joined the increasingly fractious choruses of the Cold War.  In retrospect, Ardelia Hall stands out as one of the few champions of the rights of Holocaust victims to reclaim their lost possessions and perhaps their only voice within the US government.

Her quest for missing works of art led her to France, Germany, Austria, Italy, and back to the United States which, by the 1950s, had once again become a thriving art market, a welcoming safe haven for art works wrongfully removed from their rightful owners at the hands of the Nazis only to be sold to and incorporated into leading American private and public collections by unwitting and unscrupulous art merchants alike.

The story of this unsung heroine has never been told, it has only been hinted at in a series of books and documentaries pertaining to the looting of Europe’s cultural heritage between 1933-1945.  The story of Ardelia Hall resonates today in the wake of the depredations inflicted upon the cultural institutions of the Iraqi people.  Had she been alive today, her voice would have resonated throughout the halls of the US government in protest over such devastation.

Once anointed with her new mission, Ardelia Hall’s team of art restitution experts scoured the European countryside in search of lost collections, gathered them at collecting points and ensured their safe return to the countries whence they originated.  She also investigated on her own initiative dozens of leading art dealers in Europe and the United States whom she suspected of harboring stolen works of art for profit.  Her quest for justice also led her to forge working partnerships with the US Army and its legal arm, the Provost Marshal’s Office, to flush out works of art that had been illegally brought back to the United States by returning servicemen and officers.

Ardelia Hall worked hand in hand with two other art restitution specialists, Rose Valland, in France, and Evelyn Tucker in Austria.  Together, these three women took on the postwar governments of Western and Central Europe, the senior leadership of the Allied occupation military governments in Germany and Austria and the unrepentant representatives of the international art market.