How to use information in the provenance texts of Nazi looted art that has been restituted to find other Nazi-looted artworks

This Nazi-looted painting was restituted in 2016. 
https://www.lostart.de/de/Verlust/526702

Often, when a painting is restituted, it is the conclusion of a long and arduous process of archival research to establish the itinerary of the painting and the different actors involved in its looting (or sale, or transfer, or translocation). 

What happens if we take the NAMES that appear in the provenance AFTER an artwork has left the possession of the persecuted Jewish owner and plug them in to some powerful digital tools to check other provenance texts for their presence?

Could this application of digital tools provide clues that lead to other Nazi-looted artworks?

Wolfgang Gurlitt's Nazi looted art

 View of Krumau, 1916, by Egon Schiele December 2002

The Austrian city of Linz agreed to return a landscape by Egon Schiele to the heirs of the pre-war owner, Daisy Hellman. The Gestapo seized the picture after Ms. Hellman left Austria following the Anschluss. A German collector named Wolfgang Gurlitt bought the picture at auction in 1942 and sold it, along with the rest of his collection, to the city of Linz in 1953.

https://archives-financialservices.house.gov/media/pdf/072706jc.pdf

Lesser Ury, The Seamstress (Die Naeherin), Oil on canvas, 52.1 x 41.9 cm

 (Holocaust Claims Processing Office, The Louis Löwenthal Collection) https://www.dfs.ny.gov/consumers/holocaust_claims/gallery/louis_löwenthal_collection

"The Seamstress" by Lesser Ury, owned by the German Jewish art collector Louis Loewenthal, was confiscated by the Nazis in 1939-40 and acquired by Wolfgang Gurlitt.

"A pro-Nazi dealer falsely claimed years later that "The Seamstress had been destroyed in an Allied air raid. After the war, he sold it to the municipal museum in Linz, Austria.

The Times-Tribune, 13 July 1999

https://www.newspapers.com/image/528889595

Jean Baer, a Jewish art collector in Berlin, owned this painting by Lovis Corinth, entitled "Matrose (Sailor"). His widow, Ida Baer was deported to Theresienstadt in August 1942.  Wolfgang Gurlitt got hold of their painting somehow and donated it to the Lentos museum in 1953.

It was restituted to the Baer heirs in 2015.

Provenance published by Sothebys in 2015

R. Brackl, Munich

Fritz Dägling, Königsberg

Heinrich Thannhauser, Munich (1859-1935, founder of Moderne Galerie Thannhauser in 1909 and proponent of avant-garde art, notably Kandinsky, Klee and Franz Marc) 

Jean Baer, Berlin

Wolfgang Gurlitt, Munich (1888-1965, gallerist, art dealer and collector)

Neue Galerie / Lentos Museum, Linz (purchased from the above in 1953)

Restituted to the heirs of Jean and Ida Baer in 2015

https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2015/19th-century-european-paintings-l15101/lot.3.html

https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000008462992/linzer-kunstmuseum-lentos-restituiert-drei-kunstwerke

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for more about Wolfgang Gurlitt, see:

An Austrian museum is coming to terms with the tainted legacy of its first director and founding collector, Wolfgang Gurlitt, a dealer in Nazi-looted art

Austrian exhibition to reveal story of Wolfgang Gurlitt, art dealer for the Nazis turned museum director 

by Catherine Hickley, The Art Newspaper 13 March 2019

Lentos Kunstmuseum in Linz confronts the legacy of its controversial first director, cousin of Hildebrand Gurlitt

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2019/03/13/austrian-exhibition-to-reveal-story-of-wolfgang-gurlitt-art-dealer-for-the-nazis-turned-museum-director

Linzer Kunstmuseum Lentos restituiert drei Kunstwerke

Gemälde von Lovis Corinth und Emil Nolde werden vor der Rückgabe werden sie noch bis 11. Jänner ausgestellt

21. November 2014, 12:55  Der Standard

https://archive.ph/rwSZp#selection-2057.0-2085.117

(translated into English with Deepl)

Linz Art Museum Lentos restitutes three works of art

Paintings by Lovis Corinth and Emil Nolde to be exhibited until January 11 before being returned

November 21, 2014, 12:55  

Linz - The Linz Art Museum Lentos will restitute two works of art by Lovis Corinth and one by Emil Nolde. This was decided by the city council. Before they are returned, they will be exhibited for the last time until January 11. This was announced by the museum on Friday.

The three paintings are the "Maiwiese" (May Meadow) by Emil Nolde and "Othello" (The Moor) and "Schwabing" (View from the studio window) by Lovis Corinth. Provenance research revealed that the Maiwiese originally belonged to Otto Siegfried Julius, a physician living in Hamburg. Because of his Jewish origins, he was persecuted by the Nazi rulers and fled Germany in September 1938. He tried to send his art collection to Switzerland. On the way of transport, however, its trace is lost. The painting subsequently came into the possession of a Salzburg gallery owner, from whom the city of Linz acquired it in November 1953.

The two paintings by Lovis Corinth were owned by the Berlin commercial judge, merchant and art collector Jean Baer and, after his death in 1930, by his widow Ida Baer. Between 1939 and her deportation to Theresienstadt in August 1942, where she died in the same year, the woman lost control of the art collection. The further whereabouts of the artworks remain unknown, as does the time at which Wolfgang Gurlitt came into possession of them. When he sold part of his collection to the city of Linz in 1953, as part of the founding of the city's New Gallery, the two paintings were among them. Wolfgang Gurlitt is a relative of the art collector Cornelius Gurlitt, who died this May and who for months was at the center of a heated debate about looted art.

The results of this research have led to the conclusion that the works must be returned in accordance with the Austrian Art Restitution Act. All three works are therefore to be handed over to the heirs at the beginning of the coming year. Until all formalities and transport preparations have been completed, the paintings will be exhibited in a room of the current collection presentation from next Tuesday until January 11, 2015. Following research into the provenance of the Lentos collection, the City of Linz has restituted or settled a total of ten paintings since 1999. (APA, 21.11.2014)

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Unnecessary mysteries

Signs that provenance research has gone off the rails include:

• extremely long texts that leave the reader so confused that he/she concludes that there is no such thing as knowledge
• massive use of words indicating uncertainty or unknowability
• omission of crucial information that is available and which provides important context
• mention of names which are known to be either persecuted Jewish collectors, Red Flag dealers of Nazi looted art, or associates with forgers WITHOUT mentioning that that's who they are
• excessive speculation
• false information

In this series of posts, we will examine a few remarkable examples of needlessly confusing provenance texts published by major museums. 

 

Correspondence regarding looted works of art in Switzerland 1945-6 UK Archives

Interesting sources available in the UK Archives for Nazi looted art.

FO 371/45771/21

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C13370847

Registry Number: UE 6318/123/77. 

Benno Geiger in Provenances of Artworks Auctioned at Christies or Sothebys

 The panelists at the conference on Nazi-looted art in Italy that just took place in Venice offered many interesting insights. One of the topics that came up was the art dealer Benno Geiger, a known dealer of Nazi looted art, in a presentation by researcher Katharina Hüls-Valenti.

Geiger has been a subject of interest to us for a while. (See: "Geiger" artworks currently in American or British museums)

In this post, we look at a few of the artworks that have been auctioned at Christies or Sothebys that have some link to Benno Geiger, either in the provenance (an obvious red flag that calls for in depth verification) or in the references.  Why references? Because Nazi art looters like Benno Geiger have been known to lie about ownership histories.

Warning: given Geiger's involvement in the art market for Nazi-looted artworks and forced sales, there is no guarantee that the provenances are correct or complete. Sometimes, however, bringing the texts together in one place can make it easier to see the patterns that remain hidden when one studies each artwork individually.

Artworks linked to Benno Geiger that have been auctioned at Christies or Sothebys

German Museums that do NOT publish Nazi-era provenance online as of March 23 2022

According to our tests, the following German museums are rated "F" (FAIL) for transparency concerning the ownership history of artworks in the Nazi-period 1933-1945.

This means that a visitor to the museum's online collections website cannot see where a painting was or who owned it during the Nazi period.

(Please help us to update this list as museum websites evolve.)

• Neue Pinakothek in Munich

There is a field "Herkunft". However it does not give the ownership history. It only states who sold, gave or loaned it to the museum. There is no link to or mention of Lostart, Linz or Munich Collecting point information. 

• Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen

There is no ownership history. There is no link to or mention of Lostart, Linz or Munich Collecting point information. 

 

• Lenbachhaus

There is a field "Zugang". However it does not give the ownership history. It only states who sold, gave or loaned it to the museum.  There is no link to or mention of Lostart, Linz or Munich Collecting point information. 

WALLRAF-RICHARTZ-MUSEUM & FONDATION CORBOUD

No real online collections database, no provenance on the Wallraf-Richartz website - not even for iconic works like Asparagus (about whose Nazi-era provenance artist Hans Haacke famously did an entire exhibition). To find information about the history of artworks one must go to LostArt.de or plunge into Immunity from Seizure documents. And yet, provenance research projects have been announced with great fanfare. But whatever the results are, they do not appear to be on the website.

 cc

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Dataset: Problematic provenances of artworks in Dutch museums 31 AUG 2021

DATASET: 

Artworks published on the Dutch site Museale Verwervingen Vanaf 1933 (Investigation into the provenance of museum collections in connection with the theft, confiscation and sale of objects under duress between 1933 and 1945.)

Description: 

This dataset contains publicly available information originally published online by the Dutch authorities which has been formatted as a CSV file for easy download and analysis with digital tools. It includes 167 artworks selected by Dutch museums because they changed hands in Europe during the Nazi era (1933-1945) and have incomplete provenances. It is intended to facilitate research into Holocaust-era provenance for scholars, art historians, families, and data scientists. 

Contents: 167 artworks selected for provenance research by museums in the Netherlands

note: The objects were selected by museums in the Netherlands many of which declined to participant. The selection is not complete.

Date Retrieval: 

31 August 2021

Date Publication:  

31 August 2021

Information in the Dataset:
RetrievalDate, Source Url, Artist, Title, Year, Technique, Inventorynumber, Category, Museum, Conclusion,Explanation, Provenance, Dimensions

DOWNLOAD CSV

VIEW CONTENTS

Cultural property at the Oberfinanzdirektion München Bundesarchiv: archives

 

DE-1958_354da674-59a2-477f-9c9d-20da7f0840c6 

https://open-data.bundesarchiv.de/apex-ead/DE-1958_B_323.xml

In attempting to verify one of the names that appears in a provenance with an extremely high Uncertainty Index (Bottenwieser), we stumbled upon an archive file (xml) in German that contains the names of many plundered Jewish collectors (and other people as well).  

Are there names here that should be plugged into the Looted Art Detector? 

Below is a Google translation of the first few paragraphs of the German text followed by the text itself. 

(archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20210715022418/https://open-data.bundesarchiv.de/apex-ead/DE-1958_B_323.xml)

***

Fiduciary management of cultural property at the Oberfinanzdirektion München Bundesarchiv 2010 

Data Visualization Test

How to grasp the scale of the transfer from Jewish art collectors persecuted by the Nazi to museums in the United States, Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, as well as countries in South America?

Some experiments in data visualization.

First, an overview (attention: the figures are not real, they are only to test the visualization.)

The Nazis looted so much. Destroyed so many lives. How to represent this in a way that is understandable, meaningful - and actionable?

The devil is in the detail. 

Karl W. Bümming: Key figure in movement of looted works of art between Germany and Switzerland.

"Key figure in movement of looted works of art between Germany and Switzerland."

Question for provenance researchers: Who was Karl W. Bümming?

LINZ Waldmüller

searching for Waldmüller: Hitler's LINZ museum

 LINZ Waldmüller DMH

Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project Stiftung Board, Advisory Council and Staff March 2021

JEWISH DIGITAL CULTURAL
RECOVERY PROJECT FOUNDATION

 https://jdcrp.org/foundation/

The JDCRP Foundation, “Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project Stiftung”, headquartered in Berlin, is the legal administrator of the project and is subject to the German Civil Code. The Foundation embodies the governing framework for the project, and ensures its financial viability. It is comprised of a Board of Trustees, an Executive Board and an Advisory Council. 

Alfred Flechtheim: Das Soldatenbad by Kirchner

Das Soldatenbad by Kirchner is one of the many paintings Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim lost due to Nazi persecution which targeted him and forced the Aryanization of his art gallery in 1933.

The Holocaust and the art market: What does it mean to find Kieslinger in a provenance?

What does it mean to find the name Franz Kieslinger in a provenance? 
(above "Acquired from Dr. Franz Kieslinger, expert at the Dorotheum, Vienna, for 40 Reichsmarks in 1939"

Franz Kieslinger was, first and foremost, a Nazi art looter.
His name in a provenance is a screaming Red Flag. 
This does not mean, of course, that every artwork he touched was looted from Jewish collectors, but his name indicates a high probability of a serious problem.  

In which art collections does his name appear today, in 2020?

1. Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria.

The National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism lists six artworks at the Albertina Museum that passed through the hands of Nazi art looter Franz Kieslinger, all of which were acquired in 1939.

Gentleman in blue high-necked coat with golden cording	Anonymous, attributed to 'German artist'	28378	Acquired from Dr. Franz Kieslinger, expert at the Dorotheum, Vienna, together with inventory numbers 28377, 28379, 28380 for 360 Reichsmarks in 1939
Katharina Fröhlich, Grillparzer's eternal bride (1800-1879), in dark dress with...	Attributed to Theer, Robert (1808 - 1863)	28380	Acquired from Dr. Franz Kieslinger, expert at the Dorotheum, Vienna, together with inventory numbers 28377 to 28379 for 360 Reichsmarks in 1939
Lady in red dress with shoulder-length collar and white lace frill	Krafft, Joseph (1787 - 1828)	28377	Acquired from Dr. Franz Kieslinger, expert at the Dorotheum, Vienna, together with inventory numbers 28378 to 28380 for 360 Reichsmarks in 1939
Officer in blue uniform with red collar and cannon cross	Attributed to Grahl, August (1791 - 1868)	28379	Acquired from Dr. Franz Kieslinger, expert at the Dorotheum, Vienna, together with inventory numbers 8377, 28378, 28380 for 360 Reichsmarks in 1939
Triumphal gate in Innsbruck	Hagenauer, Karl (1898 - 1956)	28207	Acquired from Franz Kieslinger, expert at the Dorotheum, Vienna, for 30 Reichsmarks in 1939
Underdrawing for 'Aus dem Leben eines Wüstlings' (From the Life of a Libertine)	Genelli, Bonaventura (1798 - 1868)	28323	Acquired from Dr. Franz Kieslinger, expert at the Dorotheum, Vienna, for 40 Reichsmarks in 1939

see: https://www.kunstdatenbank.at/search-for-objects/fulltext/kieslinger


Comments: First of all, it should be noted that the provenance for the Genelli featured above is pubished NOT on the Albertina Museum website but rather on the separate website of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism. 

Below is a screenshot from 23 April 2020 of the artwork as it appears on the Albertina Museum website. There is no provenance listed at all. This means that any search - even an Advanced Search - on the Albertina website will not pick up the artwork if one searches "Provenienz" for Kieslinger.

Secondly one notes that none of the artworks listed as having Kieslinger in the provenance are from what the Nazis labeled "degenerate" artists like Schiele. This is rather surprising as Kieslinger was known to have been involved in the expropriation of at least one Jewish collector of these artworks. 

This suggests that the listings, not only of the Albertina Museum but also possibly of even the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism might be incomplete.

Who can verify this and if necessary add the information?

Curt Valentin in provenances at the Harvard Art Museums

- The Persistent Crime of Nazi-Looted Art, by Sophie Gilbert, in The AtlanticLooted Art

The director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Alfred H. Barr Jr. used art dealer Curt Valentin as an intermediary to secretly purchase artworks confiscated by Nazis from German museums. What else did Barr and other American museums directors purchase through Valentin?

In this next series of posts, we will look at the provenances of artworks that mention Curt Valentin. 

An interesting exercise for young art historians and provenances researchers is to examine each provenance with the questions: 

1) Who owned this artwork before Curt Valentin? 

2) Are there provenance gaps for the years 1933-1945?

3) What share of artworks that mention Curt Valentin in the provenance lack information about sellers, dates and places for the Nazi years? (0-25%; 26-50%; 51%-75%; 76%-100%).

4) What possible explanations might there be for the observations in 3)?

5) What actions does this suggest?

1. Mentions of Curt Valentin in the provenances of artworks at the Harvard Art Museums

See  Valentin Harvard Art Museums Provenance



---
for more information on Curt Valentin's role in bringing European art into American museums, see:

MoMA’s Problematic Provenances by William D. Cohan published November 17, 2011 by Artnews

Fruits of a Secret Love, Albert Meyer and France's MNR

Les Fruits de l'amour secret

France's Rose-Valland MNR site publishes detailed information about the history of paintings looted by Nazis and returned to France after WWII. 

For the above "Les Fruits de l'amour secret" we learn not only its former title but also something about its history. (see "Historique" in French*).

In 1932 the artwork belonged to "Albert Meyer", however during the Hitler years it changed hands several times. The names associated with the art market transactions during the Nazi years are, according to the MNR, the following:

• galerie Charpentier (1938)
• auctionneer Etienne Ader
• experts Jules Féral et Catrou and Francis Max-Kann
• Sperling of New York
• Gilbert Lévy
• Galerie für Alte Kunst in Munich
• Linz
• M. J. Oppenheim of Paris

After the defeat of Nazi Germany, the artwork is associated with:

• Alt Aussee (1945)
• Munich Central Collecting Point (1945)
• Commission de récupération artistique in Paris (1949)
• Louvre (1952)

What does the Louvre say about this artwork?

Not a lot.

The Louvre does mention that it comes from the "Commission de récuperation" but gives no explanation.

---

The Nazi-era names mentioned in the provenance on France's MNR site are well-known. In 1946, the Art Looting Investigation Unit flagged Charpentier as a Red Flag Name, writing:

Charpentier, Jean. Paris, 76 rue du Fbg St Honore. Sold to Germans through Josef Muehlmann. An exhibition held in March 1941 at his gallery was sold out to Goering. Angerer exhibited tapestries there at the same time which were also sold.

The auctioneer was also documented by the Art Looting Unit:

Ader, Etienne. Paris, 16 rue Favert. Dealer who worked for the Germans during the occupation. Sold to Haberstock. Documentary evidence in Unit files.

and the expert:

Feral, J. Paris, place Vendome. Had a close business connection with the French art dealer Pierre Dandry, who worked with Bornheim and Lohse.

As for Sperling of New York, he was praised by the museum director Thomas Hoving as one of his "favorite dealer-smugglers" (Besides Harry Sperling another of my favorite dealer-smugglers was John J. Klejman.) 

Sperling was in additon the president of Kleinberger, whose Paris branch was run by his cousin Allen Loebl, who was also flagged by the Art Looting Investigation Unit in 1946:

Loebl, Ali (Allen). Paris, rue des Pyramides/9 rue de l’Echelle/34 quai de Passy. Dealer, of Austro-Hungarian Jewish descent. Director and leading spirit of the firm Kleinberger & Co, ‘aryanised ‘ under the name of E Garin during the war. Centre of the informal art dealing syndicate comprising Wendland, Perdoux, Mandl, Boitel, Dequoy, Engel. Sold chiefly to Lohse, Hofer and Haberstock, for whom he travelled as agent in unoccupied France. Contact of Mohnen, Landry, Mestrallet. Indicted by the French Government (Seine Tribunal, Judge Frapier).

Such a provenance for the years 1933-1945 raises a lot of questions.

Where exactly was "Les Fruits de l'amour secret" between 1932 and 1938? 

And who, one wonders, was Albert Meyer? 

___

Meyer is a very common name. A quick digital search turns up a couple of candidates who were alive in 1932 and who collected art, as well as additional provenances that mention an "Albert Meyer" for those years. We can't know from a simple digital search whether it is the same Albert Meyer, but we can look at the mentions to see if anything pops.

Here, for example, is a mention of "Albert Meyer" in the National Gallery of Art in Washington:

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.74175.html

Phillipe Weiner, Paris; Albert Meyer (sold Seligmann Gallery exhibition, Paris May 24-June 8, 1935, no. 100); Mrs. Jesse I. Straus (née Irma S. Nathan, 1876-1970), New York, (her sale, New York, Parke-Bernet Galleries, 21 October 1970, no. 21); to Armand Hammer Collection, 1970; gift to NGA, 1991.

There is another mention of Meyer together with Seligmann in the Louvre for "Copie d'après VINCI Leonardo da
Ecole florentine,Vieille femme en buste, de profil à gauche":

http://arts-graphiques.louvre.fr/detail/oeuvres/0/228003-Vieille-femme-en-buste-de-profil-a-gauche-max

 acquis par la Société des Amis du Louvre avec le concours de MM. Albert Meyer et Jean Seligmann; don au Louvre, Comité du 26 février 1937 ; marque du Louvre sur chaque folio (L. 1886a).
Dernière provenance : Mayer, Albert
Mode d'acquisition : achat

Année d'acquisition : 1937


and for "Tête d'homme grimaçant, une calotte sur la tête":

If we look for Albert Meyer together with Seligmann, we find a book by Germain Seligman, "Merchants of art: 1800-1960: eighty years of professional collecting", that sheds some light: 

Fortunately, the Paris firm was well-staffed with a number of men 
who had been with my father for many years and who could be relied  upon during my absences. Albert L. Meyer was particularly valuable  for his sound knowledge of the 18th century and his exquisite taste.  His name still gives eclat today to the drawings which he gathered for his personal collection.

This particular Albert Meyers was an art dealer, and an employee of Seligmann.  He accompanied Germain Seligmann on all kinds of racombolesque and amusing art business, but it all came to an abrupt end with the Nazi occupation of France (page 233):

France, of course, had been at war since September, and my young 
brother, Francois-Gerard, was called up immediately. He made the 
weary trek to Dunkirk and then joined the Resistance, where he made a brilliant record in extremely dangerous work. By some miracle, my sisters and their families escaped the awful fates of so many Jews, though they lived through terrible years of wandering and hiding. 
My brother Andre managed to get to this country with his family in 
1940 and opened a gallery in New York. He was among the first to 
rush back to France in 1945 but died of a heart attack soon after his 
homecoming. My cousin Rene, ill in a New York hospital, completely lost his will to live when France fell in June, 1940, and died within a week of that most awful of days. Jean Seligmann, son of my Uncle Arnold, was captured and shot at Vincennes. Albert Meyer, my father's and my longtime associate in the Paris firm, died in a concentration camp under atrocious conditions. 

Almost the entire stock of the Paris firm was confiscated as Jewish 
property and sold at public auction by order of the Vichy government. 
The family house on the rue de Constantine and its entire contents 
suffered the same fate, as did my private collection, much of which 
was still in my Paris apartment. At this time, the Paris records were 

burned to keep them from falling into Nazi hands. 


Albert Meyer died in a concentration camp as a Jew.

If one searches for "Albert Meyer" on The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names at Yad Vashem, one finds:

For Paris there is one Albert Meyer: Birth Year: 1874. Fate: Murdered.

The information comes from a list of deporations from France, found in Le Mémorial de la déportation des juifs de France, Béate et Serge Klarsfeld, Paris, 1978

The information on Albert Meyer of Paris published by Yad Vashem:

Last Name	Meyer
First Name	Albert
Date of Birth	06/06/1874
Place of Birth	Paris,Seine,France
Place during the War	France
Origin of Deportation	Drancy,Camp,France
Destination of Deportation	Auschwitz,Camp,Poland
Details of Transport	Transport 67 from Drancy,Camp,France to Auschwitz Birkenau,Extermination Camp,Poland on 03/02/1944
Status according to Source	deported to an extermination camp
Source	Le Mémorial de la déportation des juifs de France, Béate et Serge Klarsfeld, Paris 1978
Type of material	List of deportation from France
Item ID	3203168

* Automatic translation from Hebrew



-----

*From France's site Rose Valland, MNR

https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/mnr/REC00145

Titre: Les Fruits de l'amour secret
Ancien titre: L'Evanouissement
Auteur / exécutant / collecteur: BAUDOIN Pierre-Antoine

Référence: REC00145
Nom de la base: Récupération artistique (MNR Rose-Valland)
Date de la dernière mise à jour: 2019-08-16
Siècle:18e siècle
Technique:Papier ; pierre noire, lavis d'encre de Chine et touches de bistre
Dimensions:H. 0,295 ; La. 0,350 m.
Genèse: Variante de ce même sujet, le dessin INV 23699, voir : GUIFFREY, Jean et MARCEL, Pierre, "Inventaire Général des Dessins de l'école française", tome I, Adam à Bouchardon", Paris, Musées Nationaux, 1933, p. 44, repr. n° 197 p. 45.



Historique: Le dessin appartient en 1932 à Albert Meyer, ainsi que le mentionne le catalogue de l'exposition à la "Royal Academy of Arts" de Londres en janvier-mars 1932 (2). Enfin, l'oeuvre est présentée à la vente à la galerie Charpentier le 15 juin 1938, comme "provenant de la collection A. M., vente à Paris en vue de cessation d'indivision ... commissaire-priseur Me Etienne Ader, experts MM. Jules Féral et Catroux et M. Francis Max-Kann ..." sous le numéro de lot 1. Le dessin est acquis pour "M. Sperling de New-York par M. Gilbert Lévy agissant pour le compte de l'indivision", pour 38000 francs (3). Le dessin est acquis, le 25 août 1943, à la "Galerie für Alte Kunst" à Munich, pour le musée de Linz pour la somme de 25000 RM et provient de M. J. Oppenheim à Paris (4). Il est inventorié au musée de Linz sous le numéro 2968 et lors de la débâcle allemande le 4 juillet 1945, est transféré par précaution à Alt Aussee, puis acheminé au Central Collecting Point de Munich. Il est envoyé à Paris et arrive au siège de la Commission de récupération artistique le 10 juin 1949 (5) Le dessin est remis au musée du Louvre (Cabinet des dessins) par la Commission de récupération artistique en mars 1952 (6).


____

Web Sites Cited:

Yad Vashem website: The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names

France website Rose-Vallande MNR


LootedArt:Com website Post-War Reports: Art Looting Intelligence Unit (ALIU) Reports 1945-1946 and ALIU Red Flag Names List and Index


Artnet website: ARTFUL TOM, A MEMOIR by Thomas Hoving, Chapter 24 Getting Restless

Internet Archive: Full text of "Merchants of art: 1800-1960: eighty years of professional collecting" by Germain Seligman

USA: website National Gallery of Art


France website Le Louvre Les collections du département des
arts graphiques

See also http://ag.louvre.fr/detail/expositions/0/imprimer/12324-Presentation-des-oeuvres-recuperees-apres-le-Secone-Guerre-mondiale-et-confiees-a-la-garde-des-musees-nationaux

and (for MNR artworks with detailed information including provenance: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vR60RLJ-7XGuIBzfsjGFM6D2F9478ggDLTFKPWFjoCXZ7RCZu8sejPKnURnpefi_AiIk2CpldPsI3BB/pub?gid=1916467116&single=true&output=csv
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