A Chirico imbroglio

Helly Nahmad Gallery, NY

"Zwei Griechinnen", 1941

Sotheby's 1990

By Marc Masurovsky 

When it comes to confiscated Jewish cultural assets, we are certainly not responsible for errors committed by Nazi agents at the time that they inventoried their confiscations. Those German bureaucrats, many of whom hailed from German cultural institutions, were known for their efficient plundering of Jewish assets which they dutifully catalogued, inventoried, sorted, packed, unpacked, repacked, and shipped to other repositories only to be unpacked again, catalogued, inventoried, etc… When the Allies discovered many of these looted objects, they transferred them to their own repositories where they unpacked these recovered objects, catalogued, inventoried, carded and repacked them, before repatriating them to the countries from which they were stolen in the first place. The years-long cycle of plunder, recovery, repatriation. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. 

Record of seizure at Arnold's home, 1941

In the case of a painting by Giorgio de Chirico, referred to as “Two Greek Muses” (“Zwei Griechinnen”), painted either in 1926 or 1927, as part of a series of similar vertical works, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) removed “The Two Muses” from a Parisian residence and transferred the painting to the Jeu de Paume in central Paris in early March 1941. At that point, two confiscated Jewish collections entered the Jeu de Paume—Hans Arnhold’s largely Old Master collection on 7 March 1941 and the modernist collection of Michel Georges-Michel which arrived on 10 March 1941. And that’s where our little problem begins: at the registration process. 

The staff responsible for processing confiscated objects were ill-equipped to process thousands of objects diligently. A mountain of looted works had to be described, measured, assigned labels, and in some cases photographed, before being stored while deciding their ultimate fate—go to Germany or Austria, or be handed over to local dealers, or…. The ERR bureaucrats in charge of sorting confiscated works and objects upon arrival labeled the “Two Muses” as “ARN 2” and belonging to Hans Arnhold. The painting actually belonged to Michel Georges-Michel (M.G.M.). This imbroglio continued through to the end of the war and…until 2015. 

ARN 2, as recorded at Jeu de Paume, March 1941

Consistent with Nazi cultural policy, the Two Muses (now titled “Zwei Griechinnen”) were marginalized as a “degenerate” work. Like many similar works—by Dali, Ernst, Masson, Picasso, Braque, Chagall, and countless others—which the ERR did not know what to do with, it was segregated in a remote part of the Jeu de Paume, then crated in early July 1944 and loaded onto the last train commandeered by the ERR from Paris on 1 August 1944 and whose final destination was a Moravian castle at Nikolsburg (present-day Mikulov). Had the train reached Nikolsburg, the Two Muses would have likely been incinerated during a week-long confrontation between last-ditch German defenders and the Soviet Red Army and Air Force in late April 1945. 

Rose Valland's inventory of recovered works, 1944

The Nikolsburg train broke down outside of Aulnay-sous-bois east of Paris (and was later immortalized in an entertaining film with Burt Lancaster called “The Train.”) The “Two Muses” and hundreds of other modern works were spared from oblivion and returned to Paris where they should have been restituted to their respective owners. “Two Muses” was restituted to Michel Georges-Michel in 19467. However, solely based on the ERR catalogue, it would be difficult for a researcher today to know that it had actually belonged to Georges-Michel and so it was recorded as an unrestituted Arnhold painting. The work never appeared in Hans Arnhold’s restitution records which signaled a definite problem with the records. Furthermore, the Chirico painting stood out like a sore thumb in Arnhold’s conservative collection of fine Old Master paintings. A dissonant esthetic anachronism. 

The pieces finally come together 

In late fall 2015, the Helly Nahmad Gallery on Madison Avenue, NY, staged an exhibit with Phoenix Art Galleries that highlighted the Muse of Memory, Mnemosyne, partly through Giorgio de Chirico’s works on muses, juxtaposed with Greek antiquities supplied by Phoenix. A New York-based art historian spotted de Chirico’s Two Muses at the Nahmad Gallery and rang the alarm bells. It definitely looked and felt like the one documented as ARN 2. 

In early 2016, a separate on-site visit confirmed the match with the confiscated work. Upon inquiring about the provenance of the work, a gallery employee came out empty-handed. At that point, it still was not clear whether the painting had been restituted since it had been erroneously assigned to Hans Arnhold by the Nazi plunderers. Still thinking that the painting had not been restituted, a frantic month ensued with specialists in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the US, scouring archives and art historical sources only to confirm what the gallery had refused to share: the painting had belonged to Michel Georges-Michel, an interwar art critic and artist in his own right. And, most importantly, it had been restituted. Thanks to the cooperation of French cultural officials, German art historians, and restitution specialists on both sides of the Atlantic, a silly imbroglio produced by sloppy and overworked plunderers had not degenerated into a full-blown a transatlantic feud between the heirs of two Jewish victims of Nazi plunder. 

Lessons? 

1/ Thieves make mistakes. Be prepared to correct them when you realize, based on fresh evidence, that your data are wrong. It’s not you, it’s them. But it’s your duty to fix these mistakes and to inform your public of what you did in an explanatory note, to the extent that you can. 

2/ international collegiality and collaboration prevent unnecessary bad blood and complex legal entanglements while promoting higher ethical standards and due diligence in the global art market and among scholars and museum personnel. The search for historical truth is paramount in establishing the bona fides of cultural objects and ascertaining their legal status. 

Here is a partial provenance history of “Two Muses” by Giorgio de Chirico, signed and dated 1926, 130 x 70,5 cm. Oil on canvas. 

Provenance

Galerie Léonce Rosenberg, acquired from the artist; 

Michel Georges-Michel Collection, acquired from Galerie Léonce Rosenberg, Paris.

Confiscated by ERR agents, Paris, in early March 1941; 

Transfer to Jeu de Paume, 10 March 1941 where it is recorded as ARN 2. 

Set aside by ERR staff to be sold or exchanged in 1942. 

Packed in crate “Modernes 34” on 6 July 1944 at Jeu de Paume (BARCH B323/303/27, Koblenz, Germany) 

Transferred to Nikolsburg as ARN 2, 1 August 1944. 

Recovered by French forces at Aulnay-sous-Bois in late August 1944 and catalogued by Rose Valland as ‘Arnold. Chirico. Deux statues antiques, 133 x70 cm.” 

Restituted as “Les deux muses” to Michel Georges-Michel in 1947. 

Present whereabouts unknown. 

Sales 

Rameau auction, Versailles, 15 March 1970 

Sotheby’s Monaco, 25 June 1984, Lot 3409, sold as “Les muses du foyer”. 

New York, Impressionist and Modern Paintings and Sculpture, Part I, Sotheby’s, 17 May 1990, Lot 60, not sold. 

Exhibitions 

London, Arthur Tooth & Sons. First exhibition in England of works by Giorgio di Chirico as “Les Muses du foyer” (1926), no. 4, 1928 

Maybe exhibit at Galerie Flechtheim, Düsseldorf/Berlin,1930, as Zwei Frauen 

Helly Nahmad Gallery, 970 Madison Avenue, NY, late 2015-January 2016.

Select sources:

Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume, www.errproject.org

Bundesarchiv, Koblenz

Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (AMAE), La Courneuve, France

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.

Schleiertanz (Veil Dance) 1920, by Paul Klee

Schleiertanz, 1920, Paul Klee

by Marc Masurovsky 

Paul Klee produced the watercolor known as “Schleiertanz”, the Veil Dance, in 1920. It was exhibited in Munich at the Neue Kunst Hans Goltz until June 1920. Thereafter, Harry Fuld, Sr., a Jewish businessman from Frankfurt am Main, acquired the Klee watercolor and kept it in the family until his death in 1932. His eleven-year old son, Peter “Harry” Fuld, Jr., and his non-Jewish mother, Ida, inherited the Klee together with the rest of Harry’s considerable art collection, businesses and real property. Peter became a millionaire. However, Hitler’s ascent to power in late January 1933 changed all of that. Due to Nazi persecutions, Peter “Harry” Fuld, Jr. left for England shortly before the outbreak of WWII. Before his departure, the Klee was placed in storage with the shipping firm of Gustav Knauer in 1937 as well as other objects and property belonging to the Fuld family. In 1941, the Reich overrode Fuld’s ownership of items stored at Knauer’s and any real, financial and commercial property still owned by the Fulds in Germany since Harry—his father--was a Jew, Peter, although a “half-Jew”—his mother was not Jewish—was still treated as though he were Jewish. All Jews living in Germany who had “abandoned” their property to go into self-imposed exile, lost whatever assets they still held to the Reich, an act that the victorious Allied powers deemed illegal after their victory over the Third Reich in May 1945.

Some of the objects in the Fuld crates left with Knauer were placed in museums in Frankfurt, where Fuld’s family came from. It could be that all the crates packed by the Fuld family had been deposited with Knauer in Frankfurt instead of Berlin, which some researchers believe to be the case. At some point, perhaps in 1943 or 1944, the ERR, the Nazi plundering agency, designated “Schleiertanz” as a Neuwied item, an indication that it might have been stored at a customs warehouse in Neuwied which served as a central repository for items seized from Jews in Belgium and Holland.

Schloss Kogl

The absence of a “Neuwied number” for “Schleiertanz” makes it more likely that the Klee was sent to ERR headquarters at Bellevuestrasse in Berlin, a way station for confiscated "modern" works of art, from which it was transferred in a crate with other “Neuwied” items to the ERR depot of Kogl in Austria, a main recipient of loot from Western Europe, including items whose owners were “unknown”, like those marked Neuwied. It could be that the Klee was reclassified as a Neuwied item then. In 1945, the Americans found it in a crate stamped “Neuwied" and so designated it as well.
 
In 1940, the British authorities interned the young Peter Fuld as an “enemy alien” and shipped him to Canada where he remained until the end of WWII. He was released in 1941 and went to school at the University of Toronto where he sought both a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor in Law. He took Canadian citizenship in 1946 at the time of his graduation from the University of Toronto. Fuld had also fallen in love with Ivy Lawrence, a “woman of color” from Trinidad and a fellow student who was a year ahead of him.  Their unorthodox interracial romance shook things up on the Toronto campus. 

Ivy Lawrence and Peter "Harry" Fuld in Canada

Although the Nazis would have treated Peter a “mischling” or “halbjude,” still, in Canada, he had a difficult time fitting in anywhere not being born of a Jewish mother, being a native of Germany, and involved romantically with a woman from Trinidad. Ironic that he suffered similar discrimination thousands of miles away from Nazi Germany, free of racial persecution, but not free of discrimination.

In the spring of 1945, American troops liberated Schloss Kogl, one of the ERR’s depots in the Attergau in Austria, and carted off everything it contained including the Klee to the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP) in Munich, the administrative center of the US zone of occupation of Germany, where it arrived in 1946. Three years later, in 1949, the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (JRSO) received Fuld’s Klee as heirless property from the American repatriation authorities in Munich as well as hundreds of other cultural and artistic items. Together with all other heirless properties it had gathered in the Allied occupation zones in Germany and Austria, the JRSO ceded these cultural assets to the Bezalel National Museum in the newly minted State of Israel. Bezalel preceded the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. “Schleiertanz” was transferred in 1950 and incorporated into the permanent collection of the Israel Museum until its restitution in September 2010.

After WWII ended, Fuld returned to England before eventually settling in Germany. He sought out his mother, Ida, with whom he had lost touch upon going into exile as a young man and initiated proceedings to obtain restitution of his family’s lost assets which the Nazis had misappropriated. Ivy joined him in London but , once found, his mother threatened to commit suicide should he ever marry Ivy. That threat caused the breakup between Peter Fuld and Ivy and resulted in tremendous emotional harm to Peter. He required regular care at the hands of a psychiatrist. After returning to Germany, Peter died of brain cancer in March 1962. At his death, Fuld had somehow complicated matters with his estate since he had left a will to which were attached four codicils which resulted in a number of legal proceedings challenging one or more of the codicils. Some had been drafted in England, others in Germany. The messiness of inheritance especially as it affects looted and misappropriated property, cultural, financial, and immovable, was fueled by his bitter mother and the psychiatrist who had cared for Peter through his erratic emotional upheavals.
According to an article that appeared in the magazine “Ebony”, the trial over Peter Fuld’s estate produced transcripts totaling 3 million words and kept Ivy in the witness box for days. 18 million dollars (1962 value) were at stake as well as his looted assets which he had labored to recover from Germany. One third of the “residuary estate” went to Fuld’s aging mother. Another part of the estate went to Ivy with a proviso that she use 10 per cent of it for educational betterment in the West Indies. The rest went to Gita Gisela Martin, his housekeeper.

The late German lawyer and restitution specialist, Dr. Jost von Trott zu Solz, garnered the historical evidence to prove that “Schleiertanz” had once rightfully belonged to the Fuld family which had lost it at the hands of the Nazis. In 2010, the Israel Museum’s leadership accepted the evidence and agreed to restitute the Klee to Gita Gisela Martin who donated it to the Magen David Adom UK, the Israeli equivalent to the Red Cross organization, to which she had donated other “holdings” from the Peter Fuld estate. 

In turn, Magen David sold the Klee in New York through Sotheby’s as Lot Nr. 342 on November 3, 2010. It garnered $326,500.

As usual, beware of mis-written provenances. The Sotheby’s provenance for “Schleiertanz” misinterprets the historical material regarding the Neuwied phase of the Klee’s travails and does not acknowledge the fact that the Israel Museum returned the Klee to the Fuld heir who then donated it to Magen David, the consignor! It’s all in the details.

Pieter Paul Rubens, “The daughters of Cetrops find the serpent-shaped baby”

The daughters of Cetrops find the serpent-shaped baby, Rubens

by Marc Masurovsky

What’s in a provenance? According to one saying, it is all in the eye of the beholder. Should it be? After all, there are those who believe, truly believe, that a provenance is optional and is a mere adornment for the art object being offered for sale, traded, loaned or otherwise donated. The art market has learned that an “interesting” provenance can enhance the value of the art object being offered up, especially if it has survived the vagaries of war and genocide.

Still, others think that a provenance is the closest thing to a legal document. Now, why would these “others” say such a thing? Well, for one thing, a provenance should give those who come to museums to view, who go to auction houses and galleries to acquire, some basic information about where the object came from, who the current owner is, who the previous owners were. Shouldn’t the provenance meet some or all of those requirements? And if so, how complete should it be? After all, we don’t want to give the wrong impression about an object, we surely don’t want to rewrite its history, we don’t want to lie about the true history of an object. Do we?

For the sake of the exercise, let’s use a painting by Pieter Paul Rubens, “The daughters of Cetrops find the serpent-shaped baby Erichthonius, 1615, an oil on panel, painted by the 17th master in 1615 or so we think.

The online art historical database of the world-renown “Rijksbureau V. Kunsthistorische Documentatie” (RKD), a fascinating softly interactive collection of information about Dutch paintings and their collectors, proves to be most useful and the departure point for our exercise.

According to the RKD, the provenance reads as follows:

Gilhofer & Ranschburg, Luzern, 1934-11-30, lot nr. 40 
niet verkocht (volgens veiling cat. 7-8 december 2011)
Hans W. Lange, Berlijn, Collection B., Vienna, 1938-11-18 - 1938-11-19, lot nr. 180
Lange, Hans W. (Berlijn) 1938-11-18, lot nr. 180 
, het betreft hier de gedwongen verkoop van de collectie van Victor Bloch

Lempertz (Keulen) 2006-11-18, afb. colour reproduction, lotnr. 1133 
, met opgave van herkomst en literatuur
Sotheby's (Londen (Engeland)) 2011-12-07 - 2011-12-08, afb. colour reproduction, lot nr. 198 
, met opgave van herkomst en literatuur;
Dorotheum (Wenen) 2012-04-18, afb. colour reproduction, lot nr. 606 .

private collection Colas de Marolles, Frankrijk
private collection Viktor Bloch, Wenen 1938 waarschijnlijk in 1934 niet verkocht. In 1938 in Berlijn verkocht als ' collectie B., niet-arische collectie', d.w.z. joods (zie Held 1980)
Particuliere collectie / Private collection 1938 - sinds de late jaren 1930 (volgens veilingcat. 7-8- december 2011)

Hans W. Lange, Berlin

Galerie Jean-François Heim, Parijs/Bazel 2014 - Shown at the European Fine Arts Fair, Maastricht, March 2014

The Lempertz auction house in Köln, Germany, which is a habitual reseller of Holocaust-era plundered art objects, provided the following information for the Rubens painting in its sales information on November 18, 2006:

Slg. Victor Bloch, Wien;
Auktion XVIII, Gilhofer u. Ranschburg, Luzern, 30.11.1934, Lot 40;
Auktion H. W. Lange, Berlin, 18./19.11.1938, Lot 180;
seit dem Ende der Dreißigerjahre in einer westdeutschen Privatsammlung.

The Sotheby’s auction house sold the painting on December 7, 2011. Its sales catalogue included the following information about the Rubens painting:

Dr. Victor Bloch, Vienna;
His sale, Lucerne, Gilhofer and Ranschburg, 30 November 1934, lot 40, where unsold;
His forced sale ("Collection B. Vienna"), Berlin, H.W. Lange, 18-19 November 1938, lot 180;
In the possession of the family of the present owner since the end of the 1930s.

It added: “This work is sold pursuant to a settlement agreement between the current owner and the heirs of Victor Bloch...At the time of the sale in 1938, this work was accompanied by the expertise of Max J. Friedländer and Gustav Glück.”

The Dorotheum auction house in Vienna, Austria, sold the Rubens painting on April 18, 2012 and disclosed no provenance information.

We know from the RKD provenance that the Rubens painting ended up with the gallery of Jean-François Heim in Basel, Switzerland. Mr. Heim’s gallery provided the following information online:

Colas de Marolles heraldic symbol

Colas de Marolles family Collection
Probably Van Schorrel Sale, Antwerp, 1774
Dr. Victor Bloch Collection, Vienna (as Peter Paul Rubens) Sale XVIII, Gilhofer & Ranschburg, Lucerne, 30/11/1934, lot 40
Sale H. W. Lange, Berlin, 18-19/11/1938, lot 180
From the end of the 1930s in a private collection in West Germany
Sale Lempertz, Cologne, 18/11/2006, lot 1133 (as Peter Paul Rubens)

To sum things up, as far as the extant literature allows us to conclude, the oldest owner to be identified for the 1615 painting by Rubens was a French collector by the name of Colas de Marolles who presumably acquired the painting in 1774 at the van Schorrel sale in Antwerp. Jean-François Heim is the only one who mentioned this XVIIIth century historical tidbit. The painting ended up in the collection of Dr. Victor Bloch, of Vienna, at an unknown date. Dr. Bloch tried to sell the painting on November 30, 1934 at Gilhofer and Ranschburg, in Lucerne, Switzerland, as lot No. 40. But the painting failed to find a buyer, a fact noted by Lempertz, Sotheby’s and Heim.

The Nazis annexed Austria in an Anchluss on March 10, 1938. Dr. Bloch, being of Jewish descent, was subject to anti-Jewish racial laws. The Hans W. Lange auction house in Berlin, Germany, a veteran of “Jew auctions”, the swift liquidation or “forced sale” of movable property belonging to persons of Jewish descent. The property of Dr. Bloch was listed in the Lange catalogue as non-aryan, a tip-off to the potential buyer that this sale was a fire sale. Lange sold the Rubens without the consent of Dr. Bloch, to an unknown buyer on November 18-19, 1938 as Lot No. 180, a fact noted by the RKD and Sotheby’s. The Lempertz auction house and Heim failed to indicate in their provenances for the Rubens painting the fact that the Bloch sale, a non-Aryan sale, a forced sale, occurred within the context of Nazi anti-Jewish policies of economic and racial persecution aimed at dispossessing all persons of Jewish descent of their property, movable and immovable. Anyone reading their provenances would have to assume that the sale at Lange was licit and the buyer who acquired the Rubens painting had obtained it in good faith despite the fact that the Lange sale was well-advertised as involving non-Aryan property, code for Jewish, code for persecuted, code for forced sale.

The Lempertz auction house sold the Rubens painting on November 18, 2006, misleading the acquiring public into believing that the painting had been sold licitly in good faith by Lange in November 1938. For 68 years, the Rubens painting was owned illegally. In other words, Lempertz passed bad title to the next possessor who thought that he/she was acquiring the painting in good faith. On December 7, 2011, Sotheby’s in London, UK, accepted the Rubens painting on consignment from the possessor who had acquired it at Lempertz. Since December 1998, the art world has had to take heed of the so-called Washington Principles, drafted and adopted at the Washington Conference on Holocaust-era Assets. These non-binding principles serve as an ethical and moral checkpoint for the art market and cultural institutions in their treatment of art objects that have been misappropriated between 1933 and 1945. These said institutions and players are advised to do their utmost to resolve ownership disputes pertaining to these plundered objects and to reach “fair and just solutions” with the victims of the thefts and the current possessors.

Sotheby’s indicated in its sales catalogue that a settlement agreement had been reached with the heirs of Victor Bloch, meaning that the sale was going to proceed and the family of Dr. Bloch was strongly advised to accept a certain sum of money to preserve title in the hands of the seller and to close their claim for the painting. The sale proceeded. The buyer at Sotheby’s sold the Rubens a year later at the Dorotheum in Vienna on April 8, 2012. Jean-François Heim’s gallery displayed the painting at the Maastricht Art fair in 2014.

This “provenance exercise” is meant to serve as a cautionary tale regarding how art market players interpret the history of ownership of an object being displayed or offered for sale. It also shows how gallery owners and auctioneers are apt to select facts about the history of an art object. In other words, the history of objects is (re)constructed to serve, no doubt, the interests of the house. The provenance ends up being an exercise much like docudramas and historical reenactments on television, where fact and fiction coexist and interlace to produce a new narrative that masks the harsh realities of history.

Repatriation of looted antiquities to Italy

by Keri Douglas (Special to plundered art)

Artifacts
Source: Keri Douglas

In an official ceremony held on April 26, 2012, at the Italian Embassy in Washington, DC, seven rare and priceless artifacts were repatriated to Italy, as part of an on-going international effort to track down, recover and return trafficked works and objects of art.

"The story of each of these of artifacts tell us about the talent of great masters of painting, of sculpture and of the written word as well as tell of the time that each of the masters dedicated to beauty, to art, civilization and of course, the Lord." said Italian Ambassador Claudio Bisogniero hosting the ceremony at the Italian Embassy in Washington, DC with U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.

Ceremony
Source: Keri Douglas

Ceremony
Source: Keri Douglas

The objects in pristine condition with a value well over a million and a half dollars were displayed on simple easels and pedestals. Two vessels, 2000 years old, were dug from the earth in Italy, smuggled into Switzerland and then transferred to Beverly Hills before being seized in New York at Christie's Auction House. A small Roman marble statue, a janiform herm, also was smuggled from Italy into Switzerland before being auctioned at Christie's Auction House. Three 13th century illuminated choir book leaves, ripped from two separate books, one at St. Paul's Church in Pistoia and the other from the Monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore in Siena, were found on-line for sale by a rare book dealer in Portland, Oregon. The last object, unveiled with great flare, was the renaissance painting, "Leda e il Cigno" (Leda and the Swan) by Lelio Orsi, most rare for it is an oil painting on copper, had been illegally imported into the United States and was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York.

Ambassador Bisogniero said, "Criminals should have no illusion Italy and the US are firmly together in this effort and are strongly committed to combat these crimes."

However, when asked to explain the rare prosecutions in the United States despite the stated link of art trafficking to organized crime, John Morton, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director explained that these cases are very difficult to prosecute. The challenges are due to the complicated patterns traffickers create; the time elapsed from the actual theft and the time of sale or appearing in the public domain; and the forgery of documents. Often, Morton said, the perpetrator is dead.

Morton made clear though that the Italians are monitoring the global art market and the evolving Italian organized crime networks. The office of the Italian Carabinieri for the Protection of Cultural Heritage General B. Pasquale Muggeo is arresting and prosecuting individuals. In fact, the discovery of these seven objects were the result of the Italian law enforcement community aggressively monitoring the internet and art sale catalogues for stolen Italian art.

Keri Douglas is a writer/photographer and communications consultant with www.ninemusesinternational.com. Follow her on Twitter at @keridouglas.

Nazi looted art conference at Lafayette College, Easton, PA: a debriefing (II)

Day 2: October 27, 2011

Lafayette College
Source: Lafayette College via Flickr

Lafayette College is a small architectural jewel nestled in a set of rolling hills not too far from Allentown. Every building on its tightly designed campus does not conform to any cookie-cutter design. In some sense, a student of architecture would have a genuine ‘field day’ at Lafayette College.

Tiffany Windows
Source: Lafayette College Art Collection

The college is home to several cultural institutions which are always enjoyable to visit because their contents give the visitor an insight into the tastes, proclivities and priorities of the curators, the art historians and the administration. One of the biggest surprises can be found at the College Library in the form of two large-size Tiffany stained glass windows that adorn different parts of the library and project at different times of the day a strange array of hues onto those who read and loll in their midst.

It is also in the Library where some of the lectures were staged on Day Two of the Conference. The room where the talks occurred was framed in a glass-encased corner of the Library which gave the proceedings a natural openness filled with the filtered light of a typical October day, not enough to compete with artificial lighting, not enough to prevent you from viewing projected Powerpoint slides.

The room was full of undergraduate students, faculty, staff, and out-of-town visitors, which lent the presentations a well-earned level of attention that one can only find on college campuses. This is a good time to take a break and muse on this intriguing phenomenon. Why do so many people who have never heard of “looted art,” “cultural plunder”, “degenerate art”, “restitution”, “Washington Principles,” “provenance research,” flock to these events? Granted, interested professors flog their flock into attending these presentations on pain of reprisals at exam time (joke!). However, the phenomenon is widespread and unexplainable when contrasted by the sheer indifference displayed by policymakers, so-called art experts, even historians themselves. It’s as if one senses a thirst to know more, to learn, to find out the details, to search for meaning, a thirst that is left unquenched by the strictures and preconceptions of academicians and professionals alike. So much for the soap box.

The presentations went well. Victoria Reed of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts provided a well-thought out description of how the MFA has treated claims for works and objects in its collections in recent years. A major cultural institution better known for its irascible refusal to restitute anything, especially antiquities, the MFA has gradually adapted to the complexities of art restitution and the circumstances under which objects might have changed hands illegally owing to racial and other forms of persecutions against their rightful owners.  Although there is a long way to go still, the MFA has demonstrated that, when called upon to make the difficult choice to restitute a claimed object, thereby de-accessioning it, the benefit of the doubt is being given to the claimant, thereby reversing a decades-old tradition of invoking traditional legal defenses to forestall restitution.

"Portrait of a Man And Woman In An Interior" by Eglon van der Neer
Source: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The two keynote lectures of Day Two were scheduled for the evening in a large amphitheater-like room where the “Rape of Europa” had been screened the previous evening. The first keynote was delivered by Jonathan Petropoulos, who teaches at Claremont-McKenna College in California, followed by Lucian Simmons, who heads up global restitution efforts at Sotheby’s in New York.

Jonathan Petropoulos, Phd
Source: Claremont McKenna College

The two presentations were remarkable for one reason only: they were both anchored in personal experience. Jonathan Petropoulos chose to regale the audience on how his interest in Nazi cultural policy morphed into a lifelong quest to come to grips with Nazi looted art and to “do the right thing” for claimants. On the other hand, Simmons unapologetically built on the fact that he was at Sotheby’s to optimize returns for “the house”—it is a for-profit operation after all!—and if art restitution can serve the interests of his employers while doing some good along the way, so much the better for it. Sure!

For those who love redemption stories, Petropoulos’ presentation was a case in point. Charming, articulate, deeply versed in his field, entertaining at times, the tall, soft-spoken professor from Claremont McKenna put forth the image of an honest do-gooder who, in the course of his crusade to get to the bottom of the looted art problematic, got in way over his head at times, risking his professional career, his reputation and, god forbid, even the safety of his family! No comment…well, yes, there will be comments, but not what you might expect.

Aside from being well-published, Jonathan Petropoulos came to prominence in the budding world of restitution of Nazi loot when, in the late 1990s, he stumbled on evidence that a painting by Claude Monet on loan at a museum in Boston had been pilfered in Paris by local agents of Nazi Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. That particular painting once belonged to the legendary Parisian Jewish art dealer, Paul Rosenberg. The painting was returned to the Rosenberg heirs, all was well and Jonathan was now a player in the art restitution field.Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps (1903)

We bumped into each other while serving as directors of research at the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust-Era Assets (PCHA) in 1999 and 2000. While I focused on looted gold, Petropoulos took on the charge of investigating looted art. The final report of the PCHA speaks volumes (a thin one, to be honest) on its overall accomplishments. I will leave it at that.

"Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps (1903)" by Camille Pissarro
Source: Artinfo

Years later, Petropoulos’ name and fortunes became indelibly linked, by his own making, to a notorious Nazi war criminal, master plunderer SS Captain Bruno Lohse, deputy commander of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) operation in German-occupied Paris, and, for a short time, actual head and master coordinator of anti-Jewish cultural plunder in German-occupied France, before his retreat to Germany in the summer of 1944, his brief incarceration, trial and conviction by a French military court (very light sentence), before becoming a very successful art dealer in … you guessed it!.... “degenerate art” and Impressionists from his luxury apartment in Munich. His business operations extended mainly to Switzerland and Lichtenstein. In short, Petropoulos had befriended Lohse and maintained a decade-long relationship with the former war criminal until Lohse’s death in 2007. The public perception of Petropoulos and Lohse centered on a complicated attempt at restituting a famed painting by Claude Pissarro (Quai Malaquais), the property of the Bermann-Fischer publishing fortune and the subject of a forced sale in Vienna before ending up in Lohse’s private collection. The claims and counterclaims are ugly and should be the subject of a separate article. Suffice it to say that the painting was finally sold at Christie’s in 2009.

Petropoulos came out of his keynote speech as a selfless crusader for the cause of claimants seeking to recover looted art. Someone in the audience asked him: “Why do you do it?” He replied that this is his life’s work and he must. Sigh!

Lucian Simmons
Source: Sotheby's

Lucian Simmons is a character. Witty, refreshingly light on his feet, impeccably-dressed, he cuts a very appealing figure while describing in a most understated way (oh! So British!!) his daily schedule busy brokering restitutions, recoveries, sales of recovered items, fending off Russian pseudo-mafiosi-like characters, while babysitting elderly women in upstate New York, all in a heartbeat, seven days a week. And, of course, in the midst of all of this, his Christmas days are routinely disrupted by restitution crises. Oy gevalt! Who would have known?! The trouble is that Lucian does very well for the house with the trade in recovered stolen cultural property. Trouble, I say? Well, yes, it is troublesome to think that one can earn so much money off of historically-centered cultural larceny with genocide and persecution as its moral backdrop, layered by failed and flawed recoveries in the postwar world, complicated by supposedly bona fide acquisitions which would transform current possessors into victims on par with Nazi victims! Well, yes, I have a problem with this, but that’s just me.

Restitution? How does one broker a restitution while working at Sotheby’s? More often than not, it is the result of a complex discussion between the consigner, the claimant, and “the house.” The goal is the sale. The outcome: who will profit from it? This is referred to as restitution. I call it a financial settlement that upholds the rights of the current possessor. And Lucian is a master at this craft. Not to fault him for it, but one must admit that it is a skewed vision of the overall framework that informs the global debate on cultural plunder and its legal and ethical consequences at the point of sale.

Nevertheless, after a hard day at the office, Simmons finds a way of trumpeting the positives of his heady job, emphasizing that good things come of these intersections with history.

Needless to say, one can take only so much from self-scripted redemption to unabashed optimization in the same evening. So much for the current state of affairs as pertains to Nazi looted art and current efforts at restituting plundered items to their rightful owners.