DATASET: Art Provenances AFTER Restitution of Looted Art

Claims for Nazi-looted art or duress sales sometimes result in restitution or settlement agreements which cause the restituted artwork to be sold at auction.

Below are artworks whose provenance, as published by Christie's auction house, mentions a restitution or settlement agreement with the heir of a victim of Nazi persecution.

These provenance texts provide valuable information to art historians and Holocaust researchers, offering insights into the art market networks that dealt in Holocaust-linked artworks between the time they left the possession of the persecuted Jewish collectors and the time they were restituted.

(original source of information: Christie's auction website)

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Dataset:  CSV Download 

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URL: 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vT9UtnanPSGuAIi63ObN4G4xtK2Ya6_eIzgIAM2ILah-kxKJhHRmvgeFdCnWdKxcEDfHKpQvNJfUNCh/pubhtml?gid=1713651722&single=true

Erasing Jewish owners from provenance: Martha Liebermann

 

Martha Liebermann committed suicide the day before her planned deportation by the #Nazis to the Theresienstadt Ghetto

Her heirs list this portrait of her daughter Käte by her husband Max on Lost Art.

You would not know this from the #NGA's #provenance.https://t.co/5JY2Clrb0b pic.twitter.com/q0xVQLhDkb

— Open Art Data | @openartdata.bsky.social (@OpenLinkArtData) July 9, 2024

Graupe in provenance texts of American museums

The Paul Graupe auction house was a key player in sales of Jewish art collections during the Nazi-era.

In this post, we look at a selection of  88 artworks in American museums that mention "Graupe" in the provenance text.

 Some texts refer to sales prior to 1933. Some texts specify that an artwork was NOT sold at Graupe's. And some texts clearly refer to sales at Graupe's during the Nazi era. Some texts are factual while others contain speculative language.

Provenances for Chagall at the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland?

 How are Swiss museums progressing on Nazi-era provenances?

A search for Marc Chagall at the Kunstmuseum Basel.

• Marc Chagall
• • Ma fiancée aux gants noirs, 1909
• Öl auf Leinwand
• 87.4 x 64.4 cm
• Kunstmuseum Basel, mit einem Beitrag von Dr. h.c. Richard Doetsch-Benziger erworben 1950
• Inv. 2239

Provenienz

spätestens 1920 – Datum unbekanntHerbert von Garvens-Garvensburg (1908–1953), Hannover
1926Alfred Flechtheim (1878–1937), Berlin (in Kommission?)
Datum unbekannt – ca. 1930Christoph Bernoulli (1897–1981), Basel
ca. 1930 – 1950Eduard Freiherr von der Heydt (1882–1964), Ascona, angekauft bei Christoph Bernoulli
1950 – heuteKunstmuseum Basel, angekauft bei Eduard von der Heydt

Reportedly found in - a sampling of interesting provenances

What does "reportedly found in" mean when it appears in a provenance text for an artworks or antiquity?

Below are a few sample texts.

(Texts published by museums are indicated by color.)

Erasing Jewish collectors' names from Nazi looted art: Alfred Weinberger

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 In 2009, Sotheby's put up for sale this Renoir entitled DEUX FEMMES DANS UN JARDIN with the following provenance.

PROVENANCE

Soutro Gallery, London
Sale: Christie's, London, June 24, 1997, lot 284
Private Collection (sold: Sotheby's, New York, November 3, 2005, lot 114)
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

https://web.archive.org/web/20181204232353/https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/lot.177.html/2009/impressionist-modern-art-day-sale-n08547

No mention of Alfred Weinberger, who had owned the Renoir until a Nazi looting organization seized it in Paris on December 4, 1941.

The above is one of the most typical provenance types that conceals Nazi-looted art. 

Looted Art Detector: Custom Indicator File Art Traffickers

The list below contains the last names of antiquities trafficker who were investigated by the Manhattan DA, the FBI or other criminal investigators for their role in trafficking looted cultural heritage.

It is easy to check art provenances and references for names of known art traffickers and their networks using publicly available text analysis tools. 

Below are several lists of words that can be useful, no matter what the tool (Voyant-Tools, Rstudio, Python, ChatGPT, Lootedart Detector, etc.)

The user can analyse provenances for any names or words that seem interesting.

See also: Looted Art Detector 

and Using Custom Indicators

The list below contains the last names of antiquities trafficker who were investigated by the Manhattan DA, the FBI or other criminal investigators for their role in trafficking looted cultural heritage. To add your own words, simply copy or download the CSV and add your content and save as your own file.

word	type of flag
Hecht	HeritageFlag
Symes	HeritageFlag
C. T. Loo	HeritageFlag
Latchford	HeritageFlag
Klejman	HeritageFlag
Sperling	HeritageFlag
Wiener	HeritageFlag
Marion True	HeritageFlag
Frel	HeritageFlag
Becchina	HeritageFlag
add your own names	HeritageFlag
add your own names	HeritageFlag

If you want to have each name counted SEPARATELY? (not lumped together), you can a line for each name, like this:

Phoenix Ancient Art: selected provenances

detail of Marble female figure Cycladicca. 3200–2700 BC (on loan to the Met)

 Phoenix Ancient Art has been in the news quite a bit lately, and art crime experts are advising museums to verify their collections.

French government report 2022: The looting of works of art in France during the Occupation, organized, large-scale actions

Below is a translation into English of the following document:

 Le pillage des oeuvres d'art en France pendant l'Occupation  des actions organisées et de grande envergure  

https://www.culture.gouv.fr/Media/Thematiques/Musees/MNR/Le-pillage-des-aeuvres-d-art-en-France-pendant-l-Occupation.pdf

Holocaust victims and refugees in art provenances

Museums and auction houses rarely mention that a name in a provenance of an artwork corresponds to a person who was robbed and murdered by the Nazis or a Jewish refugee fleeing to escape the Holocaust.

This Wikidata Sparql query displays a few of the art collector whose names are absolutely to be considered red flags in provenances because they either died in the Holocaust or were forced to flee to survive.

Wikidata query run 18 May 2024: Short link: https://w.wiki/A7pr

Table: Art Collectors and Dealers who died in the Holocaust or were forced to flee

Osthaus Museum Hagen restitutes Renoir "View of the Sea from Haut Cagnes" to heirs of Jakob Goldschmidt (1882-1955)

Jakob Goldschmidt (1882-1955) was one of the most important bankers of the Weimar Republic. Persecuted by the National Socialist regime, Goldschmidt fled Germany in the spring of 1933 and emigrated to the USA via Switzerland in 1936. His German citizenship was revoked in 1940 and his assets were confiscated the following year. 

Goldschmidt's art collection was auctioned off on September 25, 1941 at the Hans W. Lange auction house in Berlin. 

The Renoir painting Blick von Haut Cagnes aufs Meer (cat. no. 45) (View of the Sea from Haut Cagnes) was purchased by Hildegard Diehn, the wife of Wehrmacht officer Wilhelm Diehn. In 1960 the Renoir was at the Nathan Gallery in Zurich, where it was acquired by Prof. Gustav Stein from Cologne, a member of the Federation of German Industries. He passed the painting on to Fritz Berg, President of the South Westphalian Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Hagen in 1948 and the first BDI President from 1949. After the death of his widow, Hildegard Berg, the Berg art collection was transferred to the Osthaus Museum Hagen. 

- source: press release from Osthaus Museum Hagen https://www.osthausmuseum.de/web/de/keom/presse/renoir2023.html

Koutoulakis in provenances

Where do artworks that passed through notorious looted antiquities trafficker Nicolas Koutoulakis pop up?

Dataset with Koutoulakis-linked items in the:

• J. Paul Getty Museum
• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Museum of Fine Art Boston
• and others

DOWNLOAD

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSe2WxRJsHZnL51JGH1IFro3aD4HEvApAS5s2eThoj19Zpjkm-QcEKWLQ9k8tRbXjKiMDnn9YSW7c5P/pub?gid=2017851174&single=true&output=csv

Minneapolis Institute of Art provenance status for selected artworks - mostly European

The Minneapolis Institute of Art publishes provenances for some artworks but not for others.

Below is a list of selected artworks at Artsmia.

Provenances, where present, are from April 20, 2024)

Download Data in  CSV for research

Tracking Looted Art with Knowledge Graphs: A Wikidata Case Study

Art looting networks operate on many levels, many of them hidden, over long periods of time. The native graph function of Wikidata enhanced by federated queries can help track them.

Tracking Looted Art with Graphs

April 9, 2022, Laurel Zuckerman

Graphs and Networks in the Humanities 2022 Technologies, Models, Analyses, and Visualizations

6th International Conference, 3. – 4. February 2022, Online

The 6th international conference on Graphs and Networks in the Humanities took place from Thursday 3. February to Friday 4. February 2022 online, co-organized by scholars from the Huygens Institute (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences), the Academy of Sciences and Literature | Mainz, Vienna University, University of Leipzig, and the University Ca’ Foscari Venice

Paper: Tracking Looted Art with Graphs: A Case Study 

See also:

The Error is the Message: Extracting Insights from Deceptive Data for Nazi looted art

The Knowledge Graph Conference, 2023

VIDEO: 

https://youtu.be/WBMpZ3NDNRQ?si=wsFtV9wzBEghCSoB

Contextual Information for Nazi-era Provenance Research - Wikidata Sparql Query

Holocaust victim, art looting Red Flag name, Nazi party member, or persecuted person?

Art historians, provenance researchers, museum curators, scholars of the Holocaust and the art market,

If you would like to know whether a person in a provenance is a Holocaust victim, a looting Red Flag name, a Nazi party member, or a persecuted person, here is a Sparql query in Wikidata that can help:

https://w.wiki/7gg3

                                                       (collectors, dealers)

Clicking on the link above runs a Wikidata Sparql query.

The link below is more complete but runs slower...

https://w.wiki/8rbj
(collectors, dealers, curators, art historians)

Comparing 1961 and May 30 2019 provenances for Manet's La Sultane in the Bührle collection

How many times did the provenance change?

Word/Phrase	1961 Catalogue Count	2019 Bürhle website Count
dealer	1	0
silberberg	1	9
?	0	2
art market	0	1
by	0	7
rosenberg	0	5
might	0	1
until	0	1
no documents	0	1
was never really and completely owned by Silberberg	0	1

Edouard Manet

Young Woman in Oriental Garb

ca. 1871

Lady with a Fan, Lady with a False Provenance

 

Why did the National Gallery of Victoria originally list a "Dr. Grunden of Hamburg" in the provenance of this 17th century painting by Gerard ter Borch, Lady with a Fan? 

When Max Emden's grandson, Juan Carlos Emden, found, in Australia, the painting that had belonged to his family before Hitler came to power, he knew the provenance was wrong.

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts: no provenances for Picasso?

How can a major American museum fail to publish provenance information for European artworks created before 1933?

Photo	Short Title	Date	AccNum	Credit Line	Provenance
	Pedestal Table (Translation)	1922	47.10.80	T. Catesby Jones Collection	NO PROVENANCE
	The Banjo Player (Primary Title)	1921	47.10.81	T. Catesby Jones Collection	NO PROVENANCE
	The Horse (Primary Title)	1901	85.795	Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon	NO PROVENANCE
	Head of a Peasant Woman (Former Title)	1906	47.10.78	T. Catesby Jones Collection	NO PROVENANCE
	Still Life (Wineglass and Newspaper) (Primary Title)	ca. 1913–4	47.10.83	T. Catesby Jones Collection	NO PROVENANCE
	Fool on Horseback (Former Title)	1905	84.2	Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon	NO PROVENANCE
	Landscape (Translation)	1907	47.10.79	T. Catesby Jones Collection	NO PROVENANCE

DATASET: Latchford Wiener Hecht Sperling Klejman in provenances at Metropolitan Museum of Art

FLASH: 26 Doris Wiener provenances added 17SEP2023!

September 2, 2023

DATASET Metropolitan Museum of Art artworks with links to Douglas Latchford, Doris Wiener, Robert Hecht, Harry Sperling, John Klejman, Klaus G. Perls, Joseph Brummer 

Dataset name: Selection Latchford plus Metmuseum 2022

Description: This enhanced Provenance dataset has been constructed from information available on the public internet site of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It includes the provenance and credit line information for artworks which mention Douglas Latchford, Doris Wiener, Robert Hecht, Harry Sperling, John Klejman, Klaus G. Perls, Joseph Brummer and others.  It is intended to facilitate research into antiquities provenance for scholars, art historians and investigators. 

Format: Google Sheet

URL: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTO8W-KpmI91d_l-l4LAoyp_alzQAPaIFAhug2YbStfvUeWMWqjmeAVtO-E4vA7PrOrzjza7b26s6DH/pubhtml?gid=995287093&single=true

Download: CSV

Contents:

• Selection
• Source
• RetrievalDate
• YEAR Acquired
• Source Url
• Title Date
• Artist
• Credit Line
• Acc Num
• Provenance (as published by the Metropolitan Museum on its website on March 29, 2022)
• Description
• Artist_Region
• Artwork__tombstone Value

Publisher of Dataset: OAD

Date of Publication: September 2, 2023

Kurt Feldhäusser or Weyhe in provenance of artworks in American museums

Source Url	Title	Artist	Credit Line	Acc Num	Provenance
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/483489	Crouching Woman with Crab	Aristide Maillol | Crouching Woman with Crab | French | The Metropolitan Museum of Art	Bequest of Scofield Thayer, 1982	1984.433.35	Mr. Bruno and Mrs. Sadie Adriani Bruno and Sadie Adriani, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., [ Buchholz Gallery } [Buchholz Gallery, New York], E. Weyhe Gallery [E. Weyhe, New York, probably on loan to the Whitney Studio, New York, sold in March 1924 to Thayer], [probably on loan to Whitney Studio, sold in March 1924 to Thayer], Scofield Thayer (1924–d. 1982, on extended loan to the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Mass., as part of the Dial Collection, 1936–82, his bequest to MMA), Worcester Art Museum
https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/296387	Madame Fisher | Harvard Art Museums	Diego Rivera, Mexican (Guanajuato, Mexico 1886 - 1957 Mexico City)	Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Meta and Paul J. Sachs	1965.437	Recorded Ownership History;[The E. Weyhe Gallery, New York, New York], sold, to Meta and Paul J. Sachs (L. 2091), Cambridge, Massachusetts, bequest, to Fogg Art Museum, 1965.
https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/225571	Proun 12E | Harvard Art Museums	El Lissitzky, Russian (Pochinok, Russia 1890 - 1941 Moscow, Russia)	Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, Association Fund	BR49.303	Recorded Ownership History;Kurt Feldhäusser, Berlin, bequest, to Marie Luise Feldhäusser, 1945, sold, [E. Weyhe Gallery, New York], sold, to Busch-Reisinger Museum, 1949.
https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2018/impressionist-modern-art-evening-sale-n09930/lot.22.html	Das Soldatenbad (Artillerymen)	Ernst Ludwig Kirchner		NOTE: Claim for Nazi-looted art and Restitutionto heirs of Alfred Flechtheim	Provenance;Galerie Ludwig Schames, Frankfurt;Alfred Flechtheim, Dusseldorf (acquired from the above in 1919);Städtisches Kunstmuseum, Dusseldorf (acquired by donation in 1928-29);Alfred Flechtheim, Dusseldorf (acquired from the above by exchange in 1930 and left in the custody of his niece, Rosi Hulisch, on his departure from Germany in 1933);Kurt Feldhäusser, Berlin (acquired in 1938);Marie Luise Feldhäusser, Berlin (by inheritance from her son, above, in 1945);Erhard Weyhe Gallery, New York (acquired from the above in 1949);Mr. & Mrs. Morton D. May, St. Louis (acquired by 1952);The Museum of Modern Art, New York (a gift from the above in 1956);The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (by exchange from the above in 1988);Acquired by restitution from the above in 2018