World War II Provenance Research

From its inception, the National Gallery of Art has conducted extensive research into the provenance, or history of ownership, of objects in its collection, with particular attention over the past several years to the World War II era. In the course of this research it was discovered that the objects in this slideshow had in fact been looted during the war. Archival research uncovered documentation indicating that each of these works of art had been returned to its rightful owner after the war. These objects are displayed in this slideshow with links to their ownership history. Wartime histories, including extensive archival references, are documented in their provenance footnotes. (See information on how to read Gallery provenance texts.) One painting, Frans Snyders' Still Life with Fruit and Game, was determined to have been looted from a French collection and not subsequently restituted. It was returned to its rightful owners in 2000. In 2016, the National Gallery of Art came to a mutually acceptable agreement with the family of the prior owner of a drawing by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, A Branch with Shriveled Leaves, in which it was returned to the family and a second drawing, by Friedrich Olivier, remains in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.

Several of these objects had been confiscated by the Nazi Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) from private French collections and stored at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. Captured German records, now at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, have been used to trace the confiscation and subsequent dispersal from the Jeu de Paume. Most of the Gallery objects confiscated in this manner were discovered in salt mines in southern Germany and Austria by the Allies in the last days of the war, and were removed to the Munich Central Collecting Point. Records from the Munich Central Collecting Point document the restitution of the objects to their countries of origin, where prewar owners or heirs claimed them. Other objects now in the National Gallery of Art were recovered after the war and returned to owners in Liechtenstein, Austria, and Holland.

The National Gallery of Art provides known provenance information on this website for all paintings and sculpture in the collection. The provenance is subject to change as new information becomes available. This research is an ongoing project, and the Gallery welcomes any information that would augment or clarify the ownership history of objects in its collection.

Alessandro Algardi, A Flagellator of Christ, c. 1630s, silver, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1991.124.1

This text is selected provenance involving World War II. For the full provenance, please visit the art object page via the link above.

Selected Provenance

This object was sold in 1942 with the Eugen Gutmann collection of 225 silver, jewelry, and Renaissance objects to the dealers Karl Haberstock and Julius Boehler [See papers of Haberstock Gallery, National Archives RG 260/Box 446, copies NGA curatorial records]. After the war the Gutmann heirs filed a claim for the return of the collection, which was recovered in Starnberg, Germany, and sent to the Munich Central Collecting Point. This sculpture was restituted to the Dutch government with others from the Gutmann collection on 8 July 1946. [See Dutch claim #N-3, National Archives RG 260/747; see also Munich property card #16395/33 and Dutch Receipt for Cultural Objects no. 15A, item no. 110, National Archives RG 260/288, copies NGA curatorial records].

Selected Associated Names

Böhler, Julius
Gutmann, Eugen
Haberstock, Karl
Munich Central Collecting Point

We float high above the land, looking across rolling hills toward a shimmering, aquamarine-blue body of water to our left and towns peppered along taller mountains to our right, beneath an incoming storm in this horizontal painting. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting. Only upon closer inspection does one discover dozens of tiny men and women scattered in groups or individually across the landscape. Closest to us but still tiny in scale, at the lower center, a man wearing a scarlet-red tunic and dark pants chops down a tree as another man wearing navy blue walks away from us. A man snoozes on the grass nearby and another squats in the protection of a hollowed out tree, pants down, in the lower left corner of the painting. The rolling, light brown hills angle away from us to our left. Atop a hill to our left, a tall frame holds up two flaming wheels. At its foot, a person wearing robes kneels and looks up, arms raised, at the wheel, which is on fire. Three people, one wearing armor, lie nearby and others run away. A structure on a rocky outcropping nearby is also on fire, and black smoke billows skyward. In the harbor below, at the center of the composition, two ships tip wildly in the water. People walk and work in pairs and groups through the rest of the landscape, including a bustle of activity around a wooden ship being built to our right. Travelers on foot and on horseback follow a winding road along the harbor toward a castle on the far promontory. Beyond that lies a ship-filled port town, and, across a drawbridge on at the far right, a walled city in the hazy distance. Clouds rolling across the left half of the painting are charcoal gray, almost black. To our right, patches of bright blue sky peek through a thin screen of white clouds.

World War II Provenance Research

Antwerp 16th Century, Matthys Cock, The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine, c. 1540, oil on plywood transferred from panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.2.18

This text is selected provenance involving World War II. For the full provenance, please visit the art object page via the link above.

Selected Provenance

This picture was acquired from Karl Rössler in 1940 by the dealer Walter Paech in Amsterdam. Paech sold the painting to Hans Posse, for Hitler's planned museum in Linz. (See Linz inventory no. 1368, as by Brueghel, National Archives RG260/Boxes 428, 430, copies NGA curatorial files). The records of the Munich Central Collecting Point indicate that the painting was recovered at Alt Aussee and restituted to the Netherlands on 4 March 1946 (See Munich property card #4347/2996, National Archives RG260/Munich Central Collecting Point/Box 501 and Dutch Receipt for Cultural Property no. 8A, dated 7 March 1946, National Archives RG260/Munich Central Collecting Point/Box 288, both copies NGA curatorial files.) The painting was restituted to Rössler on 23 May 1947 (see documentation provided by the Dutch Inspectie Culuurbezit in letter dated 5 February 2002, in NGA curatorial files.)

Selected Associated Name

Munich Central Collecting Point

World War II Provenance Research

Jacopo de' Barbari, Nude Woman Holding a Mirror (Allegory of Vanitas), c. 1503/1504, engraving, Rosenwald Collection, 1948.11.18

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Selected Provenance

This print is inventory no. 829 of the Rudolf Ritter von Gutmann collection [1880-1966 , L2770] confiscated by the Nazis in Austria in 1938. The collection was stored at the Zentraldepot in Vienna and transferred to the salt mine at Alt Aussee. The print was restituted to the Viennese dealer Christian M. Nebehay acting on Gutmann’s behalf in August 1947 (Restitution decision in Zl. 4716/47; export license in Zl 4694/47 dated 11 August 1947, all Bundesdenkmalamt, Vienna, copies in NGA curatorial files).

Eight other prints from the Gutmann collection are in the National Gallery of Art, all restituted via the dealer Nebehay. These are: 1948.11.56 (no. 772); 1949.4.1 (no. 799); 1948.11.15 (no. 804); 1948.11.138 (no. 828); 1949.5.36 (no. 830); 1948.11.17 (no. 833); 1948.11.20 (no. 834); 1950.17.16 (no. 846).

Selected Associated Names

Gutmann, Rudolf
Nebehay, Christian

We look down onto papers and books piled on a small wooden table with delicate, spindle legs, with a dog and cat on a sofa in the background in this vibrantly colored, stylized, vertical painting. The scene is loosely painted with dabs and visible brushstrokes in butterscotch and golden yellow, azure and navy blue, apple red, and white. The square table takes up most of the bottom two-thirds of the composition. Its surface is almost entirely covered with a spread of papers and stacks of books, including two thick, white volumes near the front, right corner and a thin red book on the other front corner. Smaller squares between the books are painted with streaks and washes of turquoise blue, scarlet, and brick red. A tall, narrow vase with abstracted, ice-blue flowers sits behind the stacked books, to our right. Beyond that, at the back right corner of the table, a sheet of paper reads “ALBUM MUSICAL,” with the final L partially obscured by a piece of bubblegum-pink paper set askew atop the stacked books. The artist’s name appears in rust-red letters on a paper at the back left corner of the table: “Bonnard.” The rug beneath the table is dominated by a vivid, azure-blue ring. The blue ring is surrounded by a white band decorated with widely spaced, black ovals dotted with pale lemon yellow. At the center of the blue ring is a black circle dotted with abstracted rosettes made with rings of apricot orange and gray around yellow centers. At the back edge of the rug, at the top left corner of the painting, a white cat sits and brown spotted dog lies on a mustard-yellow sofa, which has a wooden arm on the end we can see. There is a tangerine-orange chair next to it, in the upper right corner of the painting, and a teal-blue block there could be a pillow. The floor between the furniture is goldenrod yellow.

World War II Provenance Research

Pierre Bonnard, Work Table, 1926/1937, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 2006.128.12

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Selected Provenance

During World War II the painting was confiscated from the Paul Rosenberg collection in Paris by the Nazi Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR). Documents from the National Archives in Washington indicate that the painting had been selected by Hermann Goering on 9 July 1941 from the Jeu de Paume (OSS Consolidated Interrogation Report #2, The Goering Collection, 15 September 1945, Attachment 5, Liste der für die Sammlung des Reichsmarschalls Hermann Göring abgegebenen Kunstgegenstände, dated 20 October 1942, 1 Nachtrag, no. 31, National Archives RG239/Entry 73/Box 78, copy in NGA curatorial files). Goering traded the picture to the dealer Gustav Rochlitz, from whom it was recovered after the war. The records of the Munich Central Collecting Point indicate that the painting was recovered by the Allies and restituted to France on 27 March 1946 (Munich property card #8046, National Archives RG260/Box 503, copies in NGA curatorial files). It was exhibited in 1946 in Les Chefs-d'oeuvre des collections privées françaises retrouvés en Allemagne par la Commission de Récuperation artistique et les Services allies, no. 52.

Selected Associated Names

Bernheim-Jeune
ERR
Goering, Hermann, Reichsmarschall
Munich Central Collecting Point
Rochlitz, Gustav

World War II Provenance Research

François Boucher, Design for a Funeral Monument, c. 1767, black chalk and stumping with touches of graphite, heightened with white, on brown laid paper, Gift of Arthur L. Liebman, 1992.87.28

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Selected Provenance

This drawing was among the Rothschild collections confiscated by the Nazis in Austria in 1938 and stored at the monastery in Kremsmünster, from where it was later evacuated to the salt mine at Alt Aussee. It was discovered there by US forces and in July 1945 sent to the Munich Central Collecting Point (Munich Central Collecting Point Property Card no. 4804, US National Archives, copy NGA curatorial files). On 15 December 1945 it was returned Kremsmünster and placed under the control of the Landeskonservator of Land Oberoesterreich. It was restituted to the Rothschild family on 4 October 1947 (AR 711, export license Zl 5905/47 dated 3 October 1947, Bundesdenkmalamt, Vienna, copies in NGA curatorial files).

Selected Associated Names

Munich Central Collecting Point
Rothschild, Alphons de
Rothschild, Clarice de, Baroness

World War II Provenance Research

Eugène Boudin, On the Jetty, c. 1869/1870, oil on wood, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.13

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Selected Provenance

This painting was confiscated by the Nazi Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) from the Levy de Benzion collection in France. The painting was selected by Hermann Goering on 25 November 1942 from the Jeu de Paume (OSS Consolidated Interrogation Report #2, The Goering Collection, 15 September 1945, Attachment 5, Liste der für die Sammlung des Reichsmarschalls Hermann Göring abgegebenen Kunstgegenstände, dated 20 October 1942, 1. Nachtrag, no. 67, National Archives RG239/Entry 73/Box 78, copy in NGA curatorial files). The records of the Munich Central Collecting Point indicate that the painting was recovered by the Allies and restituted to France on 18 April 1946 (Munich property card no. 5914; French Receipt for Cultural Objects no. 6A, item no. 950, National Archives RG260/Ardelia Hall/Box 286 copies NGA curatorial files). The painting was returned to the Levy de Benzion family on 10 May 1946.

Selected Associated Names

ERR
Goering, Hermann, Reichsmarschall
Munich Central Collecting Point

World War II Provenance Research

Hendrick ter Brugghen, Bagpipe Player, 1624, oil on canvas, Paul Mellon Fund and Greg and Candy Fazakerley Fund, 2009.24.1

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Selected Provenance

Possibly Gustav Klemperer Edler von Klemenau [1852-1926], Dresden; his son, Dr. Herbert von Klemperer [1878-1951], Berlin (Dr. Klemperer was forced to surrender the painting when he left Germany in 1938: sale, Lange, Berlin, 18-19 November 1938, no. 151); acquired by Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, inv. no. 2613; restituted July 2008 to Klemperer's heirs.

Selected Associated Names

Bernheimer Fine Arts Ltd.

World War II Provenance Research

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Madame Stumpf and Her Daughter, 1872, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.23

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Selected Provenance

Given by the artist to Monsieur F. Stumpf; Stumpf family until at least 1906;[1] Mme Barbier de Saint Hilaire, née Madeleine Stumpf, the child in the painting; sold by 1922 to (Tedesco Frères, Paris) and (Paul Rosenberg and Co., New York, London and Paris).

According to a letter from Alexandre Rosenberg dated 27 June 1977, in NGA curatorial files, the painting was confiscated with others from the Rosenberg collection in France in 1940, traced to a Swiss collection in 1945, and returned to the Rosenbergs in 1947. The painting is listed as no. 37.954 in the Répertoire des biens spoliés en France durant la guerre 1939-1945 [List of Property Removed from France during the War, 1939-1945, Groupe française du conseil de controle, 1947. Documents from the National Archives in Washington indicate that the picture was confiscated on 18 September 1940 from the château of Floirac (see letter dated 15 December 1944 from Edmond Rosemberg with first list of Floirac pictures, National Archives RG 260/743, copy NGA curatorial files). The painting was selected by Hermann Goering from the Jeu de Paume (OSS Consolidated Interrogation Report #2, The Goering Collection, 15 September 1945, Attachment 5, Nachtrag zur Liste v. 20.10.42 der für die Sammlung des Reichnsmarschalls Hermann Göring abgegebenen Kunstgegestände dated 9 April 1943, no. 3, National Archives RG239/Entry 73/box 78; see also OSS dispatch dated 29 August 1945, National Archives RG 226/Entry 190/Box 532, copies in NGA curatorial files). The French dealer Zacharie Birtschansky [1889 - c.1950] was then involved in selling the picture to Hans Wendland for a Swiss dealer, probably Fischer (see OSS Consolidated Interrogation Report #2, The Goering Collection, 15 September 1945, p. 57-8, National Archives RG 226/Entry 99/Box 105, copy NGA curatorial files).

Selected Associated Names

Barbier de Saint Hilaire, Madeleine, Mme.
ERR
Goering, Hermann, Reichsmarschall
Rosenberg & Co., Paul P.
Stumpf, F.
Tedesco Frères
Wendland, Hans

World War II Provenance Research

Gustave Courbet, La Bretonnerie in the Department of Indre, 1856, oil on canvas, Gift of the W. Averell Harriman Foundation in memory of Marie N. Harriman, 1972.9.8

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Selected Provenance

Exhibited at Paul Rosenberg Galleries in Paris in 1937. It was deposited with part of the Rosenberg collection at the Banque Nationale pour le Commerce et l'Industrie in Libourne, from which it was confiscated by the Nazi's ERR on 28 April 1941 (see Rosenberg claim file, National Archives RG260/Box 743, copies in NGA curatorial files). Documents from the National Archives in Washington indicate that the painting had been selected by Hermann Goering on 14 September 1941 from the Jeu de Paume (OSS Consolidated Interrogation Report #2, The Goering Collection, 15 September 1945, Attachment 5, Liste der für die Sammlung des Reichsmarschalls Hermann Göring abgegebenen Kunstgegenstände, dated 20 October 1942, no. 52, National Archives RG239/Entry 73/Box 78, copy in NGA curatorial files). The records of the Munich Central Collecting Point indicate that the painting was recovered by the Allies and restituted to France on 29 January 1946 (Munich property card #5836/788; French Receipt for Cultural Objects no. IIIa, item no. 167, National Archives RG260/Box 503 and RG260/Box 287, copies in NGA curatorial files). The painting was returned to the Rosenbergs on 17 May 1946 (see correspondence dated 23 June 2000 from the French Ministere des Affaires Étrangeres in NGA curatorial files).

Selected Associated Names

ERR
Goering, Hermann, Reichsmarschall
Munich Central Collecting Point
Rosenberg & Co., Paul P.

Shown from the waist up, a clean-shaven man with pale, peachy skin is dressed in black and burgundy red in this vertical portrait painting. His shoulders are as wide as the composition and his hat nearly touches the top edge, so he almost fills the painting. His body and face are angled to our right, and he looks off in that direction with hooded brown eyes under slightly raised brows. He has a long, bumped nose, high cheekbones, the hint of a five-o-clock shadow, and his pale pink lips are closed. His hair is cut straight across at ear length, and fuzzy sideburns come down to his jawline. A wide, soft black cap curves down either side of his head to ear level. He wears a white shirt with a delicate black pattern on the neckline, which is tied with a thin black ribbon. A voluminous dark red shawl or wrap has two black bands along the bottom hem, and it engulfs his sloping shoulders. In the lower corners of the painting, we see long black sleeves under the wrap. The sleeves have slashes to allow the white undergarment to show through. He is set against a lime-green background and illuminated by bright light from the upper right, which creates a darker green shadow behind him, to our left. The artist signed the painting with a symbol on a small, light brown panel, which appears to be affixed to the back wall in the upper left corner of the painting. The date, “1522,” appears over a winged serpent holding a ring in its mouth.

World War II Provenance Research

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Portrait of a Man, 1522, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1959.9.1

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Selected Provenance

This painting was confiscated by the Nazis in 1938 with others in the collection of August and Serena Lederer, Vienna. It was discovered in 1945 by US forces at the abbey in Kremsmünster and transferred to the salt mine at Alt Aussee. By August 1947 it was transferred to the control of the Bundesdenkmalamt, Vienna. [Receipt for objects of Austrian origin, dated 14 July 1947, item no. 841, National Archives RG 260/USACA/Box 1, copy in NGA curatorial files.] According to a letter dated 10 April 1987 from Gerald G. Stiebel to John Hand, in NGA curatorial files, this and 1959.9.2 were acquired from the Lederer family by the firm of Rosenberg & Stiebel, who sold the paintings to the Kress Foundation in 1954.

Selected Associated Names

Lederer, August and Serena
Stiebel, Ltd.

World War II Provenance Research

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Portrait of a Woman, 1522, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1959.9.2

This text is selected provenance involving World War II. For the full provenance, please visit the art object page via the link above.

Selected Provenance

This painting was confiscated by the Nazis in 1938 with others in the collection of August and Serena Lederer, Vienna. It was discovered in 1945 by US forces at the abbey in Kremsmünster and transferred to the salt mine at Alt Aussee. By August 1947 it was transferred to the control of the Bundesdenkmalamt, Vienna. [Receipt for objects of Austrian origin, dated 14 July 1947, item no. 841, National Archives RG 260/USACA/Box 1, copy in NGA curatorial files.] According to a letter dated 10 April 1987 from Gerald G. Stiebel to John Hand, in NGA curatorial files, this and 1959.9.1 were acquired from the Lederer family by the firm of Rosenberg & Stiebel, who sold the paintings to the Kress Foundation in 1954.

Selected Associated Names

Lederer, August and Serena
Stiebel, Ltd.

World War II Provenance Research

Edgar Degas, Three Studies of Ludovic Halévy Standing, c. 1880, charcoal on tan laid paper, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.88

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Selected Provenance

During World War II the drawing was confiscated by the Nazi Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR, no. D-W 355) from the David-Weill collection in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, and recovered by David-Weill after the war. David-Weill was president of the Conseil artistique de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux. His claim for objects not recovered after the war is published in the Répertoire des biens spoliés en France durant la guerre 1939-1945, Groupe français du conseil de controle, 1947.

Selected Associated Names

David-Weill, David
ERR

World War II Provenance Research

Edgar Degas, Three Studies of Ludovic Halévy Standing, c. 1880, charcoal counterproof on buff wove paper, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.167

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Selected Provenance

During World War II the drawing was confiscated by the Nazi Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR, no. D-W 355a) from the David-Weill collection in France, and recovered by David-Weill after the war. David-Weill was president of the Conseil artistique de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux. His claim for objects not recovered after the war is published in the Répertoire des biens spoliés en France durant la guerre 1939-1945, Groupe français du conseil de controle, 1947.

Selected Associated Names

David-Weill, David
ERR

World War II Provenance Research

Henri Fantin-Latour, Self-Portrait, 1861, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1995.47.9

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Selected Provenance

The painting was lent by David-Weill, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, to the 1936 exhibition of Fantin-Latour's work held in Grenoble. During World War II the painting was confiscated by the Nazi Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) from the David-Weill collection in France, and recovered by the Allies. The records of the Munich Central Collecting Point indicate that the painting was restituted to France on 11 July 1946, with David-Weill as the presumed owner (Munich property card #181/6; French Receipt for Cultural Objects no. 9A, item no. 77; copies in NGA curatorial files). The painting was returned to the David-Weill family in September 1946 (see correspondence from the French Ministere des Affaires Étrangeres in NGA curatorial files). David-Weill was president of the Conseil artistique de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux. His claim for paintings not recovered after the war is published in the Répertoire des biens spoliés en France durant la guerre 1939-1945, Groupe français du conseil de controle, 1947.

Selected Associated Names

David-Weill, David
ERR
Munich Central Collecting Point

World War II Provenance Research

Florentine 15th Century, Desiderio da Settignano, Florentine 19th Century, Ciborium for the Sacrament, 1460s-c.1470 (stem with integral base); probably 1860s-c. 1870 (dome, enclosure, base beneath enclosure); 1870s (finial, bottom plinth), marble, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.100

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Selected Provenance

This object appears to have been part of the Vienna collection of Alphonse de Rothschild which was confiscated by the Nazis in 1938 and stored at the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna. Its location was published in 1942 as the storeroom of the Kunsthistoriches Museum by Leo Planiscig, Desiderio da Settignano, Vienna, 1942: 22. It was returned to the Rothschilds by 1951 when it was acquired by the Kress Foundation from the Baroness de Rothschild; see Kress files in NGA curatorial records.

Selected Associated Names

Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Rothschild, Alphons de
Rothschild, Clarice de, Baroness

World War II Provenance Research

Francesco Francia, Bishop Altobello Averoldo, c. 1505, oil on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.64

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Selected Provenance

This painting was among the Baron Alphons de Rothschild collections confiscated by the Nazis in Austria in 1938. It was discovered in 1945 by US forces at the abbey in Kremsmünster and transferred to the salt mine at Alt Aussee. By August 1947 it was transferred to the control of the Bundesdenkmalamt, Vienna. (Alt Aussee receipt for objects of Austrian origin, dated 14 July 1947, item number 1169, National Archives RG 260/USACA/Box 1, copy in NGA curatorial files.) It was restituted to the Rothschild family on 16 October 1947 (Index card for AR 873, restitution decision in Zl. 5739/47 dated 23 September 1947; export license in Zl 5905/47 dated 3 October 1947, all Bundesdenkmalamt, Vienna, copies in NGA curatorial files).

Selected Associated Names

Rothschild, Alphons de
Rothschild, Clarice de, Baroness
Rothschild, Nathaniel Mayer von, Baron

Shown from the chest up, a cleanshaven man with peachy skin sits angled to our right in this vertical portrait painting. He has chin-length, curly, auburn-red hair. He gazes off to our right with hazel eyes under thick brows. He has a slightly humped nose, and his wide mouth is closed. Loose jowls line his jawline. A large, soft, scarlet-red cap covers the top of his head and hangs down over the far ear, to our right. The brim is upturned and the underside lined with brown ovals. He wears a salmon-pink tunic over an apricot-colored undergarment, which is striped with thin gray strokes. The loose neckline of the tunic is trimmed with black. A background is streaked with emerald green and tan.

World War II Provenance Research

Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1520/1530, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.21

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Selected Provenance

This painting was confiscated by the Nazis from Louis de Rothschild collection in Vienna in 1938 and was destined for Hitler's planned museum in Linz, Austria. It is listed on the 20 October 1939 Vorschlag sur Verteilung der in Wien beschlagnahmte Gemaelde: Fuer das Kunstmuseum in Linz prepared by Hans Posse, and also his Verzeichnis der fuer Linz in Aussicht genommenen Gemaelde dated 31 July 1940 (OSS Consolidated Interrogation Report #4, Linz: Hitler's Museum and Library, 15 December 1945, Attachments 72 and 73, National Archives RG226/Entry 190B/Box 35, copy NGA curatorial files). The records of the Munich Central Collecting Point indicate that the painting was recovered by the Allies and restituted to Austria on 25 April 1946 with Rothschild as the presumed owner. (Munich property card #2306/7; Austrian Receipt for Cultural Property no. IIIa, item no. 29; copies in NGA curatorial files.)

The work went on to Rosenberg & Stiebel, New York, put on consignment with M. Knoedler & Co., New York, May, 1947; transferred to Knoedler's regular stock in June with a portion owned by Rosenberg & Stiebel. A letter of 2 March 1988 to John Hand from Nancy C. Little, M. Knoedler & Co., in NGA curatorial files, describes the consignment to them from Rosenberg & Stiebel.

Selected Associated Names

Knoedler & Company, M.
Munich Central Collecting Point
Rothschild, Louis de, Baron
Stiebel, Ltd.

World War II Provenance Research

Jean-Antoine Houdon, Giuseppe Balsamo, Comte di Cagliostro, 1786, marble, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.103

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Selected Provenance

The direct transfer from Sir John Murray Scott [1847-1912], secretary and advisor to Sir Richard Wallace [1818-1890] and Lady Julie Wallace [1819-1897], to Josephine Victoria Sackville-West and then to Jacques Seligmann in 1914 is described in Germain Seligman's book Merchants of Art, New York, 1961: 98-99. Seligmann Paris stock no. 7969 and New York no. 2205 (Archives of American Art, Seligmann Papers, NY Stock Catalogues, Box 280, folder 8, copy NGA curatorial files). Germain Seligmann, manager of Seligmann's New York branch, is listed as the owner in the catalogue of the 1932 exhibition of French art in London, and in Robert Cecil's 1950 article, "The Remainder of the Hertford and Wallace Collections," Burlington Magazine, XCII (June 1950): 170, no. 24. The bust was in Paris when the Nazis invaded in 1940 and was confiscated with other portions of the Seligmann family collections at that time. It was recovered and returned to France in 1947. Correspondence concerning Germain Seligmann's efforts to have the bust shipped from France to the United States beginning in 1948 can be found in the Seligmann papers, Archives of American Art, Box 141 (copies in NGA curatorial files).

Selected Associated Names

Sackville-West, Lady Sackville, Victoria
Scott, John Murray, Sir
Seligmann & Cie., Jacques
Wallace, 1st bt., Richard, Sir
Wallace, Julie-Amélie-Charlotte Castelnau, Lady

World War II Provenance Research

Joseph Anton Koch, Tivoli and the Waterfalls with Shepherd Families, 1821, pen and black ink over graphite, with border lines, on laid paper, Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2007.111.114

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Selected Provenance

In 1938 Dr. Georg S. Hirschland [1885-1942], a patron of the Museum Folkwang, Essen, emigrated to the United States with his family, but was not permitted by the Nazi government to bring his art collection with him. In 1939 the Museum Folkwang and the city of Essen raised the funds to purchase the collection to keep it together; the funds were paid to an estate administrator. The collection consisted of 27 paintings and drawings including this by Koch, described as a pencil and India ink drawing of Tivoli.

Eleven Hirschland paintings were evacuated, with other paintings from the Folkwang, to a mine near Siegen, where they were recovered by Allied forces and taken in June 1946 to the Collecting Point at Marburg, in the American zone of Occupied Germany. Other Hirschland objects were discovered in a convent in the French zone, and several drawings, including the Koch, were identified as being in a palace Hugenpost bei Kettwig, near Essen, in the British zone, in 1947. (List of location of objects from the Hirschland estate enclosed in letter from Riegelman, Strasser, Schwarz & Spiegelberg to the US Secretary of State dated 22 March 1947, NARA, M1947/48.)

Georg Hirschland died in New York in 1942. After the war his heirs, represented by a New York law firm, made claims for the collection. The 11 paintings in Marburg were transferred by September 1946 to the Collecting Point in Wiesbaden, and in October 1948 were transferred to the British zone (Receipt for Interzonal Exchange dated 19 October 1938, NARA M1941/reel 45). The objects in the French zone could not be transferred as there was no interzonal agreement in place. By 1951 it appears that all but one of the Hirschland objects in the British zone had been released to the estate in the United States. The sole holdout was an El Greco for which there was difficulty in obtaining an export permit. (Letter dated 20 August 1951 from the Senior Finance Officer, British Control Council for Germany, National Archives, Kew, FO 1014/668.)

Selected Associated Names

Hirschland, Georg S.
Stiftung Ratjen

World War II Provenance Research

Wilhelm Leibl, Malresl Working in the Kitchen, c. 1898, graphite with stumping on polished wove paper, Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2007.111.117

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Selected Provenance

Max Silberberg [d. 1944], Breslau; (sale, Paul Graupe, Berlin, 12 October 1935, no. 64). (Sale, Karl und Faber, Munich, 30 May 1975, no. 448); Wolfgang Ratjen, Munich; repurchased 2003 by Ratjen Foundation from the heirs of Max Silberberg

Selected Associated Names

Graupe, Paul
Karl und Faber
Silberberg, Max
Stiftung Ratjen

About a dozen men and women gather around three men hanging from wooden crosses, all against a deep landscape beneath a shiny gold sky in this horizontal painting. All the people we can see have pale or tanned skin. The men on the crosses wear only white loincloths, and a gold halo encircles the head of the man in the middle, Jesus. Jesus hangs with his hands and feet nailed to the cross, and a man on the ground has pierced his right side with a lance. Blood drips down his face from a ring of thorns. Four winged angels, small in scale to the rest of the people, catch the blood pouring from the nails in his hands and feet, and the wound on his side in golden chalices. The crosses to either side angle in toward Jesus, and the men are tied to them with their arms hooked backward over the crosspiece. Their legs are tied to the vertical beam of the cross, and they bleed from wounds on their thighs. Near the head of the man to our left, an angel hovers and holds up a miniature man, like a doll. The man on the cross to our right turns his head away from the demon holding out another miniature man. Across the bottom of the composition, the people in the crowd wear garments in ginger brown, cranberry and burgundy red, and olive green. Three women, two young men, and a man on horseback are tightly clustered on the ground in the left half. The woman closest to us, Mary, wears a marine-blue gown and a white head covering. She is partly slumped to one side, supported by a woman on her left, to our right, and a young man standing just behind her. The third woman kneels on Mary’s other side, near the lower left corner of the composition, with her hands clasped together. Behind the women, the horse and its elderly, bearded rider and the cleanshaven man piercing Jesus’s side with a spear both look up at Jesus. The rider touches his left eye with the index finger of that hand, and short, red rays emanate from his eyelid. Near the back end of the horse, a man holds a bucket and a long pole supporting a sponge in a U-shaped crook at the top. A cluster of eight men are gathered in the lower right half. Two are on horseback, and the rider closest to us wears peanut-brown armor and helmet. He holds a tall staff with a red pennant bearing the letters “SPQR.” Beyond the crosses, pale green hills topped with trees and bushes lead back to a town skyline painted in shades of baby and teal blue. Scenes with people, tiny in scale, are scattered across the city and landscape. There, a crowd greeting a man entering the city on a donkey is seen in the distance to our left. A group lowers a man from a cross on a hill to our right, and a man hangs from a tree along the right edge of the composition. The gold sky fills the top quarter of the scene.

World War II Provenance Research

Master of the Death of Saint Nicholas of Münster, Calvary, c. 1470/1480, oil on panel, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2001.70.1

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Selected Provenance

The painting was confiscated by the Nazis in July 1940 from the collection of André Seligmann and taken to the Germany Embassy in Paris (See Verzeichnis der im Juli 1940 durch die Geheime Feldpolizei in Paris gesicherten und in die Deutsche Botschaft uberbrechten Gegenstände aus judischen Kunsthandlungen, p. 8-9, National Archives RG260/Ardelia Hall Collection/Box 469/File VII and ERR card no. SEL 545, as Westphalian, second half of the 15th century, National Archives RG260/Property Division/Box 19-20, both copies in NGA curatorial files). It was transferred to the Jeu de Paume from where it was removed by Hermann Goering on 5 November 1940 (OSS Consolidated Report #2, The Goering Collection, 15 September 1945, Attachment 5, List der für die Sammlung des Reichsmarschalls Hermann Goering abgegebenen Kunstgegenstände dated 20 October 1942, no. 236, National Archives RG239/Entry 73/Box 78, copy NGA curatorial files). The records of the Munich Central Collecting Point indicate that the painting was recovered by the Allies and restituted to France on 30 October 1946 (see Munich property card #6772/1722 as Flemish c. 1480, National Archives RG260/Box 503, and French Receipt for Cultural Objects No. 14A, item no. 121, National Archives RG260/Box 287, copies NGA curatorial files). In 1951 the Office des Biens Privés deposited the painting at the Musée du Louvre in Paris (M.N.R. number 622). The painting remained there until 1999, when it was returned to André Seligmann's two daughters.

Selected Associated Names

ERR
Goering, Hermann, Reichsmarschall
Munich Central Collecting Point
Musée du Louvre
Seligmann, André J.

A woman plays an upright piano as two boys play checkers at a table in this horizontal painting. The scene is loosely painted with areas of flat color and pattern. The people have pale, peachy skin and dark brown hair. Their facial features are painted with dots or short strokes of black. The piano is against the wall to our left. The woman wears a short-sleeved, lemon-yellow dress with a long skirt. A music book is propped on the music stand, and loosely painted objects line the top of the instrument. The wall behind the piano is patterned with white and pale yellow flowers under and around arches against a cranberry-red background. The table where the boys play is in the middle of the room. The players sit in wooden chairs and wear black and white striped jackets with white collars. The boy to our right looks at the board while resting his left cheek, closer to us, in his hand. The other boy looks on with his arms on the table in front of him. The checkerboard sits on a red and white striped cloth, which has lines of black dots in the white strips. Beneath the table is a floral rug with blue and black flowers against a red background. The border is painted loosely with leafy shapes against bright white. Beneath the area rug the floor or another carpet is garnet red with a diamond-shaped grid painted in orange. A petal-pink, upholstered chair sits in front of a tall wardrobe in the back corner of the room. A picture with two violins against a blue background hangs on the side of the furniture to our right. A chest of drawers next to the wardrobe holds a few bowls or objects and a white statue, about half human height. The statue is of a person standing with one knee bent in front of the other, one elbow tucked by the side with that hand held to the chest, and the other bent elbow raised overhead. Pictures hang on the wall around the statue, and the wallpaper there is ivory white with a dark yellow pattern. The artist signed the work in the lower right corner, “Henri Matisse.”

World War II Provenance Research

Henri Matisse, Pianist and Checker Players, 1924, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.25

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Selected Provenance

This painting was confiscated by the ERR with others from the Paul Rosenberg collection in France in 1941 (ERR Inventory card UNB335, National Archives RG 260/Property Division/Box 22). It was selected by Hermann Goering from the Jeu de Paume, one of the six untitled paintings by Matisse from the Rosenberg collection listed as numbers 48-53 on the Nachtrag zur Liste v. 20.10.42 der für die Sammlung des Reichsmarschalls Hermann Göring abgegebenen Kunstgegenstände dated 9 April 1943 (OSS Consolidated Interrogation Report #2, The Goering Collection, Attachment 5, National Archives RG239/Entry73/Box 78) and traded 10 December 1941 to Gustav Rochlitz, in whose possession it remained until the end of the war. It was recovered in one of Rochlitz' residences in Bavaria by the Allies and transferred to the Munich Central Collecting Point, and restituted to France on 27 March 1946 (OSS Detailed Interrogation Report #4, Gustav Rochlitz, National Archives RG239/Entry 74/Box 84 and Munich property card #8049/15; French Receipt for Cultural Objects no. 5A, item no. 298; copies in NGA curatorial files). It was returned to Paul Rosenberg on 17 May 1946 (See letter from the Ministere des Affiares Etrangeres dated 20 February 2001 in NGA curatorial files). After its restitution, the painting was exhibited in the 1946 Les Chefs-d'oeuvre des collections privées françaises retrouvés en Allemagne par la Commission de Récupération artistique et les Services alliés, no. 53.

Selected Associated Names

ERR
Goering, Hermann, Reichsmarschall
Munich Central Collecting Point
Rochlitz, Gustav
Rosenberg, Paul

To our right in this vibrantly colored, stylized, nearly square painting, a woman with light, peach-colored skin and chestnut-brown hair sits slumped along a table as she sleeps, her head resting on one extended arm. The lilac-purple tabletop has round forms representing fruit scattered around a potted plant. Many of the forms are outlined with gray and filled in with mostly flat areas of color in mint and sage green, icy blue, coral red, orange, and lemon yellow. The tabletop curves around its edges and the surface is vivid purple, while the skirt and legs of the table are pale ginger brown. The woman’s head rests facing us on her bent right arm, that hand dangling over the front edge of the table. She rests her other hand, closer to us, near the crook of her elbow. She wears a white, blousy top with rows of navy-blue zigzags on the shoulder and elongated dots on the sleeves, and a light, mint-green skirt. Her brown hair seems to be pulled back and gathered into bunches of curving waves. Her stylized eyes, nose, and mouth are drawn simply with gray lines. The round orange, peach, and yellow fruit on the table are scattered near her arm and across the table to the other side, close to a plant in a brown clay pot. The plant has shoots of long, curving stems with vibrant spruce-green leaves. Two more plants are behind the woman near the back wall, in front a rectangular opening over the woman that could be a window or mirror. The glass is painted with streaks of baby blue and pale magenta pink around a field of white, and is outlined with a band of sunshine yellow and then scarlet red. The wall around it is also painted with watercolor-like, soft fields of pale blue and pink. The floor under the table and to our left is a flat field of caramel brown. Behind the table and to our left, forms suggest a wooden chair and a blue and white ceramic pot on a tall, spindly stand. In the lower left corner of the canvas, the artist signed and dated the work with dark red paint: “40 Henri Matisse.”

World War II Provenance Research

Henri Matisse, Still Life with Sleeping Woman, 1940, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.26

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Selected Provenance

Purchased March 1940 from the artist by Paul Rosenberg and Co, New York. This painting was confiscated by the ERR in 1941 with others from the Rosenberg collection in France (see inventory of Rosenberg-Bernstein collection, National Archives RG260/Box 470/file XI, and ERR inventory card UNB322, National Archives RG260/Property Division/Box 22, copies NGA curatorial files). Documents from the National Archives in Washington indicate that the painting was selected by Hermann Goering on 3 March 1941 from the Jeu de Paume (OSS Consolidated Interrogation Report #2, The Goering Collection, 15 September 1945, Attachment 5, 2. Nachtrag zur Liste der für die Sammlung des Reichsmarschalls Hermann Göring abgegebenen Kunstgegenstände, dated 9 April 1943, no. 6, National Archives RG239/Entry 73/Box 78, copy NGA curatorial files). Goering is documented as having traded the painting to Gustav Rochlitz, who claimed to have sold it to Hans Wendland (OSS Consolidated Interrogation Report #1, Activity of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg in France, 15 August 1945, V: Details of Exchanges, exchange #1, item no. 7, National Archives RG 239/Entry 74/Boxes 84-84A and OSS Detailed Interrogation Report #4, Gustav Rochlitz, 15 August 1945, Einsatzstab Confiscated Paintings Sold by Rochlitz, no. 30, National Archives RG239/Entry74/Boxes 85-85A, copies NGA curatorial files.). However, according to Wendland, the Matisse remained with Rochlitz (OSS Detailed Interrogation Report, Hans Wendland, 18 September 1946, pp. 14-16, National Archives RG 239/Entry 73/Box 82, copy NGA curatorial files). Further documentation at the National Archives supports Wendland's claim. The picture is not among those known to have been sent by him to Switzerland with others from the same sale from Rochlitz (see Douglas Cooper, Report of Mission to Switzerland, 10 December 1945, pp. 8-9, National Archives RG 239/Entry 73/Box 82, copy NGA curatorial files). Moreover, in a letter dated 18 January 1945, Paul Rosenberg's brother Edmond states that by that time the picture was in a private collection in Paris, having been sold by the dealers Kohl and Renoux of rue Faubourg St. Honoré, Paris (National Archives, RG260/Box 743). Hector Feliciano, in The Lost Museum, New York, 1997, p. 121, reports that Matisse himself had seen the picture for sale in Paris in 1942. The picture was returned to the Rosenbergs (per telephone conversation with Rosenberg archives 16 March 2001) who later sold it to von Hirsch.

Selected Associated Names

ERR
Goering, Hermann, Reichsmarschall
Hirsch, Robert von
Rochlitz, Gustav
Rosenberg & Co., Paul P.

A woman wearing a pale blue and gray patterned top and turquoise skirt stretches out in an armchair in this stylized, almost square painting. The scene is loosely painted with areas of mostly flat color, especially in the background, so some details are difficult to make out. The woman is centered in the composition, and her legs stretch to our left. She has upswept dark brown hair, peach-colored skin, and her eyes, nose, and mouth are drawn with dark gray lines. Her blousy top is vertically patterned with lead-gray leaves down the front and elongated dots on the sleeves. Each sleeve also has a carrot-orange band on the upper arm. Her skirt is spearmint green, and she wears bone-white pumps. She sits in a canary-yellow armchair with red down the front of the arms and along the bottom, where the wood frame would be. One foot stretches to rest on a matching footstool, while her other leg is curled under her. The denim-blue floor tilts toward us and is covered with thin white lines in a chevron pattern. In the lower right is a red table with a bright yellow vase covered with swipes of brown and green. The vase is filled with elongated, abstract mauve-pink and mint-green shapes on slender white stems. The back wall of the room has an aqua-green cabinet to our left, which holds a silver urn and dishes of round objects. There is also a cantaloupe-orange footstool and other pieces of small furniture there, below paintings on the white wall. Above the woman is a white door with panels outlined in gray, and a section of black wall to our right has more paintings. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “Henri Matisse 40.”

World War II Provenance Research

Henri Matisse, Woman Seated in an Armchair, 1940, oil on canvas, Given in loving memory of her husband, Taft Schreiber, by Rita Schreiber, 1989.31.1

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Selected Provenance

Purchased from the artist by Paul Rosenberg, Paris. This painting was confiscated by the ERR in 1941 with others from the Rosenberg collection in France (ERR inventory card PR34, National Archives RG260/Property Division/Box 19, copy NGA curatorial files). There is confusion in the archival records as to whether picture was taken from the Rosenberg vault at Libourne or the chateau at Floirac. In the Rosenberg claim file (National Archives RG260/Box 742, copies NGA curatorial files) there are lists and correspondence from Edmond Rosenberg, brother of Paul Rosenberg, which provide conflicting information. However, it seems likely the picture was taken from Floirac, as it was this part of the Rosenberg collection assigned the code "PR." Documents from the National Archives in Washington indicate that the painting was traded by the ERR on 16 November 1943, along with a Bonnard painting from the Kann collection, to the dealer Max Stöcklin in exchange for a painting by Rudolf Alt. (Receipt for the exchange, National Archives RG260/ Box 452, copy NGA curatorial files). The picture seems to be confused throughout the archival documentation with another Matisse painting described as of a woman in a yellow chair, which also appears to have been confiscated from the Rosenberg collection. However this second picture dates from 1939, is in a vertical format, and the woman is nude. On some documents the code PR34 seems to be associated with the 1939 picture, but it is clearly the NGA painting which is described on the ERR card for PR34, and on the receipt for the exchange between Stöcklin and the ERR. Moreoever, the photographs taken by the ERR of confiscated objects illustrate the NGA picture with the code PR34. After Stöcklin, the painting was traced to the Swiss dealer André Martin, and seen on view at the Galerie Neupert in Zurich (See item no. 62 on attachment B to Douglas Cooper's "Report on Mission to Switzerland," 10 December 1945, National Archives RG239/Entry 73/Box 82, copy NGA curatorial files).

The NGA picture was returned to the Rosenbergs by 1948, according to the records of the gallery, which sold it to Somerset Maugham in 1950.

Selected Associated Names

ERR
Maugham, William Somerset
Rosenberg & Co., Paul P.

Shown from about the knees up, a pale-skinned young woman stands within a stone niche, with a parrot perched on her finger as she gazes out at us in this vertical painting. The woman’s hands are raised to chest height, and she balances the spruce-blue parrot on the index finger of her far hand while her other hand holds an indistinct, white object. Her body is angled to our left, and she looks at us from the corner of her green eyes under faint brows. Her round face has a small nose, flushed cheeks, and her coral-red mouth curls up in a slight smile, her lips parted. Her honey-blond hair is gathered at the back of her head with curly tendrils framing her face and falling to her shoulders. She wears a golden-brown gown trimmed with a narrow ruffle of white fabric along the low neckline that reveals her décolletage. The bird faces the woman and lifts something, presumably a bit of food, up with one dark claw. The underside of its tail is crimson red. A light-skinned boy stands in deep shadow just to the right of the woman. He looks up at her and holds a silver tray in both hands. They stand within a light brown, arched, stone opening beyond a ledge, which comes up to about the woman’s knees. A carpet patterned with stylized flowers in ruby red, burnt orange, teal blue, white, and black is bunched up and draped over the parapet, to our right. A tall, iron-gray cage sits to our left. The rug partly covers an inscription on the front face of the niche that reads, “M. DO,” with the O cut off. A copper-colored, fringe-lined drapery hangs from the upper right of the arch and is fastened to the inner edge of the opening to create a swag. The woman is brightly lit from the upper left, and the space behind her and the boy is ink black. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner as if he had carved into the front face of the arch. It reads, “CNetscher .Ao. 16.66,” with the C and N overlapping to make a monogram.

World War II Provenance Research

Caspar Netscher, A Woman Feeding a Parrot, with a Page, 1666, oil on panel, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, 2016.118.1

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Selected Provenance

Hugo Daniel Andriesse [1867-1942], a Belgian industrialist and philanthropist, and his wife Elisabeth J. Spanjaard Andriesse [1871-1963] , lent the painting to an exhibition in Rotterdam that opened in late 1938. In 1939 he deposited it, with other paintings from his collection, with the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, before fleeing Europe with his wife and eventually settling in New York. From there, after the Germans occupied Belgium during World War II, the painting was confiscated with the rest of the Andriesse collection on 3 December 1941 by the Einsatztab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR no. HA 9), and on 12 March 1942 transferred to the Jeu de Paume, in Paris. On 20 March 1944 it was acquired for the Nazi’s Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering (RM no. 1203), and transferred to Goering’s “Kurfürst Bunker,” a command center for the Nazi Luftwaffe, in Potsdam. See the record for the painting at the Cultural Plunder by the ERR website: https://www.errproject.org/jeudepaume/ (accessed 30 June 2017).

In 1950, the painting was sold via Kunsthandlung Abels, Cologne to Rudolf Ziersch, Wuppertal, who gifted the painting to the Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal, in 1952. The 1985 catalogue of 17th century Dutch paintings in the Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal, lists the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne in the provenance; this has not yet been confirmed.

In 2014, the work was restituted to the heirs of Hugo and Elisabeth Andriesse; as Hugo and Elisabeth Andriesse had no children, the heirs were the charities named in Mrs. Andriesse's will.

Selected Associated Names

Andriesse, Hugo Daniel and Elisabeth J. Spanjaard
ERR
Galerie Abels
Goering, Hermann, Reichsmarschall
Von der Heydt-Museum
von der Pfalz, Johan Wilhelm II, Elector Palatine
Ziersch, Rudolf

World War II Provenance Research

Friedrich Olivier, Shriveled Leaves, 1817, pen and gray-black ink and pen and black ink over graphite on wove paper, Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2007.111.137

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Selected Provenance

When Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938, Marianne Schmidl, the daughter of Josef Schmidl [1852-1916] and his wife Maria [1858-1934]—and the granddaughter of the artist, was subjected to persecution as a Jew. This led to her immediate involuntary retirement from her position at the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Due to her resulting precarious financial situation, Ms. Schmidl was forced to sell off the valuable drawings via C. G. Boerner, Leipzig, 28 April 1939, that she had inherited from her parents in order to pay the newly imposed "Jewish Property Tax" and for her general livelihood. Marianne Schmidl was deported to Poland on 9 April 1942 where she was killed.

The drawing was eventually part of the collection of Wolfgang Ratjen, Munich, which was purchased by the National Gallery of Art 2007. In 2016, the heirs of Marianne Schmidl and the National Gallery of Art came to a mutually acceptable agreement by which the Olivier remains in the collection of the National Gallery of Art. A second drawing from her collection (Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, A Branch with Shriveled Leaves, formerly NGA 2007.111.160) was returned to the family.

Selected Associated Names

Boerner, C. G.
Heumann, Carl
Galerie Arnoldi-Livie
Stiftung Ratjen

We look down onto a plaza with a sliver of a tall building rising along the left edge of the painting, a row of verdant, green trees to our right, and a row of buildings enclosing the space in the distance in this nearly square landscape painting. The peanut-brown building to our left nearly reaches the top edge of the canvas. It has three oversized, tall stories under a high, sloping roof with a slender chimney. A promenade with carriages runs in front of the tall building. In the plaza closer to us but tiny in scale, people gather in small and large groups, along the bottom edge of the composition. They are painted with dabs and short strokes of cobalt blue, butter and golden yellow, brick red, black, and white. The trees create a diagonal line running from the lower right corner into the scene, along the edge of the plaza to our right. Beyond the plaza and trees, the corners of a formal garden with sand-white walking paths stretch back to the row of buildings in the distance, which come halfway up the painting. That long line of buildings is painted with tones of light brown with rows of tall, narrow windows. The roofs are slate gray, and several cupolas and towers are spaced along its length. The buildings span the width of the painting and disappear behind the tall building to our left. Loosely painted, white, puffy clouds float across the ice-blue sky above. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower left corner: “C. Pissarro. 1900.”

World War II Provenance Research

Camille Pissarro, Place du Carrousel, Paris, 1900, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.55

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Selected Provenance

This painting was confiscated by the ERR in France during World War II, with other objects from the Stahl collection that were stored in a bank vault with objects from the Wildenstein collection (ERR card UNB331, as Ansicht des Louvres, Paris. National Archives RG260/Property Division/Box 22, copy in NGA curatorial files). It was transferred to the Jeu de Paume and taken by Hermann Goering on 17 March 1941, as Louvreansicht, (No. 20 on the Nachtrag zur Liste v. 20.10.42 der für die Sammlung des Reichsmarschalls Hermann Göring abgegebenen Kunstgegenstände dated 9 April 1943 in OSS Consolidated Interrogation Report #2, The Goering Collection, Attachment 5, National Archives RG239/Entry 75/Box 85, copy in NGA curatorial files). Goering traded the picture to Gustave Rochlitz in exchange for a Raffaellino del Garbo and a Wouters (OSS Consolidated Interrogation Report #1, Activities of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, p. 30, National Archives RG239/Entry 75/Box 85, copy in NGA curatorial files). The painting remained with Rochlitz, in whose possession it was found after the war (Detailed Interrrogation Report #4, Gustave Rochlitz, p. 9, National Archives RG239/Entry 74/Box 84, copy in NGA curatorial files). The painting was recovered by the Allies and restituted to France on 27 March 1946 (Munich property card #8040/6; French Receipt for Cultural Objects no. 5A, item no. 289, copies in NGA curatorial files). It was exhibited in 1946 in Les Chefs-d'oeuvre des collections privées françaises retrouvés en Allemagne par la Commission de Récuperation artistique et les Services alliés, no. 33. It was restituted to Wildenstein, from whose vault it had been removed, on 24 October 1947, and returned to Stahl that same year. Stahl sold the picture to Wildenstein on 5 January 1949.

Selected Associated Names

ERR
Galerie Georges Petit
Goering, Hermann, Reichsmarschall
Munich Central Collecting Point
Pissarro, Camille, Mme
Rochlitz, Gustav
Stahl, Bruno
Wildenstein & Co., Inc.

World War II Provenance Research

Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Agrippina and Germanicus, c. 1614, oil on panel, Andrew W. Mellon Fund, 1963.8.1

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Selected Provenance

Purchased 1710 by Prince Johann Adam Andreas of Liechtenstein [1657-1712], Vienna, Austria, and Vaduz, Liechstenstein. Records from the Liechtenstein Collection in NGA curatorial files indicate that the painting was stored during World War II in the salt mine at Lauffen bei Ischl and returned to Liechtenstein in 1945.

Selected Associated Names

Liechtenstein, Johann Adam of, Prince
Liechtenstein, Princes of

A river spans the lower edge of this horizontal landscape painting, and winds into the distance to our right, below towering white clouds in a blue sky above. The clouds sweep up and toward us from the low horizon line, which is about a quarter of the way up the canvas. Rowboats, sailboats, and ducks dot the river to our right. The long, shallow ferry boat near the bottom center of the painting transports a pair of horses and a carriage, which is occupied by at least four seated people. More men, women, and a nursing woman fill the ferry around the carriage and animals. A herd of six cows stand at the water’s edge to the left, and two people sit nearby. Two more horse-drawn carriages filled with people head away from us. A church is visible in the middle distance through a break in the tall trees on the riverbank. Another church and buildings line the riverbank in the deep distance to our right.

World War II Provenance Research

Salomon van Ruysdael, River Landscape with Ferry, 1649, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund and The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund. This acquisition was made possible through the generosity of the family of Jacques Goudstikker, in his memory., 2007.116.1

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Selected Provenance

The dealer Jacques Goudstikker fled Amsterdam with his wife and son in May 1940, and died in an accident on board the ship on which he left. He left behind most of his gallery's stock of paintings, including the Ruysdael, and with the rest of the Goudstikker paintings, it was confiscated by the Nazis later the same year and delivered to Hermann Göring; see Rapport inzake de Kunsthandel v.h J Goudstikker NV in oprichtung per 13 September 1940, Beilage III, Staat van Schilderijen, gekocht M Goering van de "oude" Goudstikker, Access no. 1341, inv. 103, Gemeentearchief, Amsterdam. The painting was recovered by the Allies at the end of World War II and held at the Munich Central Collecting Point (where it was no. 5324), before being returned to The Netherlands in 1948. In The Netherlands, ownership was transferred among several museums, during which time the painting maintained the identifying inventory number NK 2347: Stichting Nederlands Kunstbezit, The Hague, in 1948; Dienst voor's Rijks Verspreide Kunstvoorwerpen, The Hague, 1948-1975; Dienst Verspreide Rijkscollecties, The Hague, 1975-1985; Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst, The Hague, 1985-1997; and Instituut Collectie Nederland, Amsterdam, in 1997. Physical custody of the painting was transferred in 1960 to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, where it had the inventory number SK-A -983 and where it remained until 2006. In 2005, the Dutch Advisory Committee on the Assessment of Restitution Applications for Items of Cultural Value and the Second World War recommended in favor of the Goudstikker family's claim for the return of this and other paintings that had been confiscated in 1940. The surviving heirs were Marei von Saher, the widow of Goudstikker's son, Edward, and her daughters, Charlène and Chantel, who received the restituted paintings in early 2006.

Selected Associated Names

Goering, Hermann, Reichsmarschall
Goudstikker, Jacques
Munich Central Collecting Point
Saher, Marei von

About twenty colorfully dressed people fill a long room behind an old man and young woman standing before a bishop in this horizontal painting. All the people have pale or ash-white skin, and their clothing is in shades of golden yellow, raspberry pink, pumpkin orange, teal, sea blue, or pea green. The men wear tunics and leggings or robes, and some have turbans or feathered hats. The women wear gowns and white or sheer head scarves. The man at the center of the composition, the bishop, wears a pearl-white robe and conical mitre hat. His white hair falls past his shoulders, and he has a long, curly beard. A balding, bearded man and young woman with honey-blond hair stand in front of him. Each has traces of gold halos around their heads. They face each other, and each reaches out one hand, which the bishop in turn holds. The groups of men to our left and women to our right look in all directions, though few look at the couple at the center. An older woman at the rightmost edge of the group stands out. Her gray-toned face is lined, and she wears a black robe. Her eyes are screwed shut, her mouth downturned, and she holds up one hand, palm out. One man in the group to our left plays a lute and others break sticks. More broken sticks are strewn on the ground around the men. The walls of the room are pale lavender or plum purple.

World War II Provenance Research

Luca Signorelli, The Marriage of the Virgin, c. 1490/1491, tempera on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.39

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Selected Provenance

The NGA painting is no. 2585 on a May 1940 inventory of the Goudstikker gallery (copy NGA curatorial files). The Goudstikker firm and most of its contents were sold in July 1940 to Alois Meidl, an agent of Hermann Goering, to whom Miedl subsequently sold some of the inventory. The firm continued to operate throughout World War II under the Miedl's direction (see OSS Reports on Miedl, National Archives, RG239/Entry73/Box 80, copy in NGA curatorial files). According to documents in the Dutch State Archives the NGA painting was not sold to Goering. It was discovered in one of Miedl's buildings in the Netherlands after the war and returned to Goudstikker's widow, Desirée Goudstikker von Saher, on 18 May 1949. (Dutch State Archives ARA, NBI 857, nr. 7, copy in NGA curatorial files. See also letter dated 24 March 1999 from the Inspectie Cultuurbezit of the Netherlands, in NGA curatorial files.)

Selected Associated Names

Goudstikker, Jacques
Goudstikker von Saher, Desirée

Seven pale-skinned people crowd around a wooden table to our right in this horizontal painting, as several more gather around a fire in a deeply shadowed room beyond, to our left. The room we are in has high ceilings and peanut-brown walls and floor. At the center of the composition, a man dressed in mustard yellow with a yellow and burnt-orange jester’s cap stands facing us. His smiling mouth is agape, and he lifts his left arm, to our right, to gesture toward the group at the table there. His feet are widely planted, and a ceramic jug dangles from his other hand. At the table to our right, one man sits at the front, left corner of the table, leaning back in his chair as he raises his black hat high in his right hand, closer to us. His face is tipped up and his mouth is wide open. Across from him is another young man in a blue-gray jacket who wears a paper crown. With the back of the wrist closer to us planted on his hip, he tilts back his head to drink from a tall tankard held in his other hand. One young and one older woman women sit smiling among the men. The younger woman wears a navy-blue dress with a white cap covering the back of her blond hair, and the older woman is in ocean blue with a white head covering. Two more men at the table also have their mouths open and wear earth-toned clothes. A man has poked his head through a small, squared opening high on the wall above the table to our right, to look down at the group. Over the the man in the jester's hat, a gray owl sits chained to a perch driven into the wood stud that frames the wall behind the group. Bits of paper are scattered on the floor and two terracotta jugs sit gleaming in the lower right corner. A tawny cat peers out from behind the drinker’s seat. A dog with sable-brown fur lies near a low table in the lower left corner of the painting. A shallow, terracotta dish with short feet sits on the table and a brown ceramic jug, oyster shells, and a few stalks of straw sit near the dog and table. In the dimly lit room beyond this one, a man, woman, and four children gather around a fireplace. The woman holds a long-handled griddle over the flame, and she turns to look back over her shoulder. The artist signed and dated the work as if he had written on the front edge of the low table to our left: “D. TENIERS F 1635.”

World War II Provenance Research

David Teniers the Younger, Peasants Celebrating Twelfth Night, 1635, oil on panel, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1972.10.1

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Selected Provenance

Guy Stein. Baron Alex. Gendebien, Brussels, in 1937;[1] consigned c. 1939 for Baron Robert Gendebien by Eric-Emil Lyndhurst, Brussels, to (Katz Gallery, Dieren, The Netherlands); probably sold to (P. Smit van Gelder, Antwerp); sold to (J. Kalb); sold 12 February 1941 to (Goudstikker firm, Amsterdam); sold 11 December 1941 to Professor Hoffmann, Munich; Baron Robert Gendebien, Brussels, 1955. Eric-Emil Lyndhurst, Brussels, 1955.[2]

[1] The 1964 Gebr. Douwes exhibition catalogue lists a Baron Alex. Gendebien as the owner of the painting in 1937. According to correspondence with the Inspectie Cultuurbezit of the Netherlands and copies of documents provided by the Dutch State Archives, a Baron Robert Gendebien owned the painting in 1939 and was involved in its restitution after it was confiscated during World War II. The relationship between Alex. and Robert Gendebien, though obviously familial, is unclear.

[2] A note on Witt Library fiche no. 13.365 indicates that the painting was "stolen from Belgium, 1939/1945." Although the collection of Eric-Emil Lyndhurst, a Jewish collector and dealer, was confiscated by the Nazi Einstazstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in 1943, this painting does not appear on the list of his collection compiled at that time. According to his statement of 23 July 1948, "[S]ome months before the outbreak of war in 1939, [he] handed over to Mr. Nathan Katz (of the Firm D. Katz, Dieren) [the Teniers painting] belonging to Baron Robert Gendebien for sale." Lyndhurst learned from Katz that the painting had been taken by the Germans during the war. After passing through Katz, Smit van Gelder, the Nazi-controlled Goudstikker firm, Kalb, and Hoffmann (probably Heinrich Hoffmann [1885-1957], Adolf Hitler's photographer) the painting made its way into Hitler's possession. The records of the Munich Central Collecting Point indicate that after the war the painting was recovered by the Allies in Austria and restituted to the Netherlands on 15 April 1946 (Munich property card #2588/Aussee 1932; Dutch Receipt for Cultural Objects No. 10a, item no. 34, copies in NGA curatorial files). The painting arrived in the Netherlands on 28 May 1946. Although it is unclear to whom the painting was returned by the Dutch authorities, Robert Gendebien was assumed to be the rightful owner and was involved in the restitution. After its return, he may have again put the painting on consignment to Lyndhurst, who, according to the 1964 Gebr. Douwes exhibition catalogue, was in possession of it in 1955. See the letter dated 9 December 1999 from the Inspectie Cultuurbezit of The Netherlands, and copies of documents from the Stichting Nederlands Kunstbezit, archive no. 267, sent 4 January 2000 by the Dutch State Archives, in NGA curatorial files.

Selected Associated Names

Becker, Heinrich, Dr.
Galerie Charpentier
Galerie Goudstikker
Gelder, P. Smit van
Katz, D.
Munich Central Collecting Point
Private Collection c/o Gebr. Douwes Fine Art
Schaeffer Galleries, Inc.
Stein, Guy

World War II Provenance Research

Jan Victors, The Slaughtered Hog, 1653, oil on panel, Gift in honor of Felix and Lise Haas, 2018.31.1

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Selected Provenance

This painting, along with other works from the Haas collection, was confiscated by the Nazi authorities in December 1936 from the Haas home in Vienna. The painting was recovered after the war in Vienna and restituted to the family. See U.S. National Archives, RG 260, Records of the Munich Central Collecting Point/Administrative Records/Restitution Claim Records/Austrian Claims/Alphabetical, Haas-Honig, copies in NGA curatorial files. See also the personal note from Mrs. Eva Meigher, 9 March 2018, in NGA curatorial files.

Selected Associated Names

Arens, Gustav Dr.
Haas, Lise Arens
Meigher, Eva L. Mrs.
Munich Central Collecting Point

World War II Provenance Research

François Etienne Villeret, Rue de Rivoli and Pavillon Marsan, watercolor over graphite on wove paper, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1995.47.69

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Selected Provenance

During World War II this drawing was confiscated by the Nazi Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR, no. D-W 416) from the David-Weill collection in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, and recovered by the Allies. The records of the Munich Central Collecting Point indicate that the drawing was restituted to France on 11 July 1946, with David-Weill as the presumed owner (Munich property card #12549; copy in NGA curatorial files). David-Weill was president of the Conseil artistique de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux. His claim for objects not recovered after the war is published in the Répertoire des biens spoliés en France durant la guerre 1939-1945, Groupe français du conseil de controle, 1947.

Selected Associated Names

David-Weill, David
ERR
Munich Central Collecting Point

Reading Collection Information

World War II Provenance Research

The Monuments Men and the National Gallery of Art

Monuments Officers and the NGA

The Monuments Men and the National Gallery of Art

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