This post aims to collect, little by little, published provenances that have been proven to be false, and, where possible, to specify their authors and publishers.
Why try to identify lies in provenances?
Lying about the fate of artworks owned by Jewish collectors who were persecuted by the Nazis inserts false information into the historical record of the Holocaust.
For a provenance researcher to do this deliberately is, in my opinion, a grave act of immorality which facilitates Holocaust denial.
For a provenance researcher to do this "accidentally" is evidence of incompetence, which should be sanctioned and not rewarded by employers and funders.
Readers are invited to add examples of published false provenances in the comments.
False Provenances Concerning Ownership during the Nazi Era by Artist
Gustav Klimt
Edgar Degas, Landscape with Smokestacks
(read Simon Goodman's The Orpheus Clock on the battle to establish the correct provenance for the Degas looted from his grandfather.)
Marc Chagall
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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
- Provenance errors by Nazi art collector Kurt Feldhäusser and the Museum of Modern Art in New York ("location mixup")
(why did MoMA’s version carry yet another title, “Sand Hills in Engadine”?...MoMA realized Mr. Feldhäusser had mistaken the hills for ones on an island near Denmark while the museum had mistaken them for hills in Switzerland. -WSJ)
for more examples of Jewish owned art passing under the Nazis through Ferdinand Möller Galerie, Berlin ==> Kurt Feldhäuser, Berlin ==> museums see Fischer, Max lostart.de
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Paul Gauguin
Faaturuma (Melancholic)
[5] The Wildenstein catalogue raisonné of 1964 claims that Justin K. Thannhauser owned Faaturuma between Wolfensberger and Stransky, but there is no documentary evidence to support this." - (source: Nelson-Atkins museum online provenance text (December 2017))
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George Grosz
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Claude Monet
Amedeo Modigliani
Pablo Picasso
Thomas Couture
Édouard Vuillard
François Boucher
El Greco
Egon Schiele
André Derain
Cranach
Renoir
Sisley
Camille Pissarro
Georges Braque
Wassily Kandinsky
Henri Matisse
Gustave Courbet
Gerard T. Borch
Albert Gleizes
Frans Hals
Macchiaioli
Corneille de Lyon
Lucien Adrion
Bernardo Bellotto
Carl Blechen
Van Gogh
Lovis Corinth
Carl Spitzweg
Mondrian
Giambattista Tiepolo
Cornelis Troost
Jean-Louis Forain
Constantin Guys
Adolph von Menzel
Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller
Émile Vernet-Lecomte
(update ongoing...)
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images
Gustav Klimt Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (also called The Lady in Gold or The Woman in Gold) by (Former owner, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Adele_Bloch-Bauer_I
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El Greco “Portrait of a Gentleman” Seized by Nazis Returns to Owner’s Family in Artsbeat NYT. (Former owner, Julius Priester)
https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/an-el-greco-seized-by-nazis-returns-to-owners-family/
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Edgar Degas “Landscape with Smokestacks” (1890) Landscape with Smokestacks – Friedrich Gutmann Heirs and Daniel Searle
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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1917-18 painting ‘Sand Hills in Engadine aka ‘Sand Hills (By Grünau)’ Museum of Modern Art Returns Painting to Heirs of Man Who Fled Nazis, WSJ (Former owner, Max Fischer
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Claude Monet "Monet’s Garden at Argenteuil" (Le Repos Dans Le Jardin Argenteuil) , Settlement Reached on Monet’s Garden at Argenteuil (Former owner, Maria Newman, widow of Henry P. Newman)
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Paul Klee “Swamp Legend,” from 1919 After 26 Years, Munich Settles Case Over a Klee Looted by the Nazis in NYT (Former owner, Ms. Lissitzky-Küppers)
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Jan van Goyen (1595 – 1656), “River Landscape with a Swineherd”, A Goudstikker van Goyen in Gdańsk: A Case Study of Nazi-Looted Art in Poland (Former owner, Jacques Goustikker)
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