Nazi-looted Pissarro to be returned to owner's family
November 8, 2017
A Paris court has ordered a US couple to return a Pissarro painting that was looted during WWII to the family of a Jewish art collector. Although the couple purchased it in good faith, the sale was void, the judge said.
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A painting by Impressionist master Camille Pissarro should be returned to the family of a Jewish art collector after it was snatched during World War II, a French court ruled on Tuesday.
The painting, "La Cueillette des Pois" or "Pea Harvest," belonged to Simon Bauer, a wealthy French businessman whose assets were seized in 1943 by the Nazi-allied, anti-Semitic French Vichy regime.
The court ruled in favor of Bauer's descendants on Tuesday, saying US citizens Bruce and Robbi Toll, who had purchased the painting at an auction in New York City, should return it.
The couple purchased the painting from a Christie's auction in 1995 for $800,000 (worth around $1.3 million or €1.1 million today). The couple loaned the painting to the Marmottan Museum in Paris earlier this year, which is where it came to the attention of Bauer's descendants.
How Hitler and the Nazis defamed art
Before he was a dictator, Adolf Hitler was a painter. The "Führer" categorized works of art according to his personal taste. Works he hated were branded "degenerate art" and removed from museums.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
Degenerate art
Modern artworks whose style, artist or subject did not meet with the approval of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists were labeled "degenerate art." From 1937, the Nazis confiscated such works from German museums. In a traveling exhibition, "degenerate art" was held up for public ridicule. Here we see Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Hitler at the original exhibition in Munich.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Hitler's art
Hitler had an affinity for Romanticism and 19th century painting and preferred peaceful country scenes. His private collection included works by Cranach, Tintoretto and Bordone. Like his role models Ludwig I. of Bavaria and Frederick the Great, Hitler wanted to manage his own art exhibition at retirement, to be shown in the city of Linz on the River Danube in the "Führer Museum."
Image: picture-alliance/Everett Collection/Actual Films
The confiscations
The National Socialists were not the first to persecute avant-garde artists, but they took it a step further by banning their works from museums. In 1937, the authorities had over 20,000 art works removed from 101 state-owned German museums. Anything that the Nazis didn't consider edifying to the German people was carted off.
Image: Victoria & Alber Museum
Hitler's national style
Abstract art had no place in Hitler's "national style," as grew clear when the "Great German Art Exhibition" put traditional landscape, historical and nude paintings by artists including Fritz Erler, Hermann Gradl and Franz Xaver Stahl on display in Munich on July 18, 1937. The closer the depicted subject to the actual model was, the more beautiful it was in the eyes of the Führer.
Image: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-C10110/CC-BY-SA
What was considered degenerate
Even those in Hitler's inner circle were highly unsure which artists he approved of. The 1937 "Great German Art Exhibition" and the simultaneous "Degerate Art" exhibition in Munich's Court Garden Arcades brought some clarity. Unwelcome were creative artists of the modern period including Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Max Pechstein.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
Degenerate art on tour
In the "Degerate Art" exhibition, 650 confiscated artworks from 32 German museums were on display, the exhibits equated with sketches by mentally handicapped persons and shown together with photos of crippled persons. The intention: to provoke revulsion and aversion among visitors. Over two million visitors saw the exhibition on its tour of various cities.
Image: cc-by-sa/Bundesarchiv
Legal foundation
The "Degenerate Artworks Confiscation Law" of May 31, 1938 retroactively legalized their unremunerated acquisition by the state. The law remained valid in the postwar years, the allies determining that it had simply been a redistribution of state property. Unlike stolen artworks, pieces that the Nazis labled "degenerate" and had removed from museums can be freely traded today.
Image: CC by Österreichische Nationalbibliothek
The "degenerate art" trade
The confiscated art was taken to storage facilities in Berlin and at Schönhausen Palace. Many works were sold by Hitler's four art merchants: Bernhard A. Böhmer, Karl Buchholz, Hildebrand Gurlitt and Ferdinand Möller. On March 20, 1939 the Berlin fire department burned approximately 5,000 unsold artifacts, calling it an "exercise."
125 works were earmarked for an auction in Switzerland. A commission charged by Hermann Göring and others with liquefying the "degenerate" art products estimated the minimum bidding prices and commissioned the Fischer Gallery in Lucerne to carry out the auction. Taking place on June 30, 1939, it met with eager interest worldwide.
Image: picture alliance/dpa
Much "degenerate art" in the Gurlitt collection
Over 21,000 works of "degenerate art" were confiscated. Estimates on the number subsequently sold differ; sources estimate 6,000 to 10,000. Others were destroyed or disappeared. Hundreds of artworks believed lost turned up in Cornelius Gurlitt's collection — and reignited the discussion.
Image: privat/Nachlass Cornelius Gurlitt
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US couple to appeal ruling
The judge in the case noted that the Tolls did not act in bad faith when the purchased the painting, but all sales of Nazi or Vichy regime-looted goods are void.
The couple's lawyer argued that the Tolls were unaware of the painting's history when they purchased it — a position upheld by the court.
"My clients will be very disappointed not to be able to retrieve this painting. They were very attached to it. They will certainly appeal," the couple's lawyer Ron Soffer said.
The judge did not award any financial compensation for the Tolls and ordered them to pay €8,000 in court costs to the Bauers.
"They do not consider that it is up to them to pay for the crimes of the Vichy regime," Soffer said.
Last month, the couple testified in an emotional trial that they were Jewish and "very sensitive" to the memory of the Holocaust.
Gurlitt Collection: Germany's most infamous Nazi-looted art trove
So far, only 14 works were proven to have been looted under the Nazis among the some 1,500 found in Gurlitt's hoard.
Image: Bundeskunsthalle / Foto: David Ertl
Carl Spitzweg, 'Playing the Piano,' ca. 1840
This drawing by Carl Spitzweg was seized in 1939 from Jewish music publisher Heinri Hinrichsen, who was killed at the Auschwitz death camp in 1942. It was acquired by Nazi art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt — and later found among the spectacular collection of works hoarded by his son, Cornelius Gurlitt. The work was auctioned by Christie's at the request of Hinrichsen's heirs.
Image: Staatsanwaltschaft Augsburg/Lost Art Datenbank
Max Beckmann, 'Zandvoort Beach Cafe,' 1934
The watercolor by the Jewish painter Max Beckmann entered Gurlitt's collection only in 1945. Held by the allied occupation forces at the Central Collecting Point in Wiesbaden from 1945-1950, it was returned to Hildebrand Gurlitt in 1950. Before working for the Nazi regime, Gurlitt had collected and exhibited modern art, curating Beckmann's last exhibition in 1936 before the artist fled Germany.
Image: Bundeskunsthalle / Foto: David Ertl
Otto Griebel, 'Veiled Woman,' 1926
This work was owned by lawyer and art collector Fritz Salo Glaser. Artists of Dresden's avant-garde scene were his guests in the 1920s — as was the young Hildebrand Gurlitt. It is not known how Gurlitt came to possess the painting. It was confiscated in 1945 and later returned. Of Jewish heritage, Glaser only narrowly avoided deportation to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1945.
Image: Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland GmbH / Foto: David Ertl
Claude Monet, 'Waterloo Bridge,' 1903
This painting by the famous impressionist is not suspected to have been looted. The artist sold it to the Durand Ruel Gallery in 1907. The Jewish art merchant and publisher Paul Cassirer is said to have given it to Marie Gurlitt as a present, and she left it to her son Hildebrand Gurlitt in 1923.
Image: Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland GmbH / Foto: David Ertl
Thomas Couture, 'Portrait of a Seated Young Woman,' 1850
A short handwritten note allowed provenance researchers to identify this work by the French painter as a looted work of art. The picture was seized from the collection of Jewish politician and resistance leader Georges Mandel, who was executed by French fascists near Paris in 1944. German Culture Minister Monika Grütters (right) handed over the work to Mandel's heirs in January 2019.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Schreiber
Paul Signac, 'Quai de Clichy,' 1887
The activist group Provenance Research Gurlitt identified this painting by French neo-impressionist Paul Signac as stolen Jewish property in October 2018. Gaston Prosper Levy fled Nazi-occupied France in 1940. Occupying soldiers are believed to have looted his art collection shortly before his escape. The painting was returned to Levy's family in 2019.
Image: picture-alliance/Keystone/A. Anex
Auguste Rodin, 'Crouching Woman,' approx. 1882
Hildebrand Gurlitt must have acquired this work by the French sculptor between 1940 and 1945. Previously belonging to the Frenchman Eugene Rudier, it entered circulation in 1919 at an auction by Octave Henri Marie Mirbeau, who is said to have received it as a present from the artist.
Image: Bundeskunsthalle / Foto: David Ertl
Albrecht Dürer, Knight, Death and Devil, 1513
This copper engraving by Albrecht Dürer once belonged to the Falkeisen-Huber Gallery in Basel. It is not known how it got there or how long it was there however. In 2012 the engraving turned up in Cornelius Gurlitt's collection. "Old masters" like Dürer were very important to the National Socialists' view of art and were often exploited for propaganda.
Image: Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland GmbH / Foto: David Ertl
Edvard Munch, 'Ashes II,' 1899
The provenance of this drawing is completely unknown. It is certain, however, that Hitler considered Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's work "degenerate art." Some 82 pieces by Munch were confiscated in German museums in 1937.
Image: Bundeskunsthalle/Foto: Mick Vincenz
Francois Boucher, 'Male Nude,' undated
Hitler venerated 18th-century French painting. He secured exceptional paintings for his own collection by targeting the collection of the Rothschild Family after the annexation of Austria. Hildebrand Gurlitt supplemented them with drawings by renowned French painters. He acquired this work by Boucher from a Parisian art merchant in 1942.
Image: Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland GmbH / Foto: David Ertl
In Gurlitt's apartment
Cornelius Gurlitt hoarded the sculpture along with many other artworks for decades in his Munich apartment. Before his death in 2014, he consented to have his stocks researched and — should they include articles of stolen art — have them returned to their rightful owners in accordance with the Washington Principles on Nazi-looted art.
Image: privat/Nachlass Cornelius Gurlitt
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French family 'pleased' with result
Bauer's last surviving grandson, Jean-Jacques Bauer, 88, said he was "pleased" with the ruling and that the decision was "normal."
Bauer's grandfather, who made his fortune in the shoe industry, managed to escape while being deported to Nazi concentration camps due to a train drivers' strike. He passed away two years after the end of the war in 1947.
Tuesday's ruling is in line with previous legal decisions over art looted from Jews by the Nazis, some of which was later sold to owners who did not know the artwork's history.
A 2011 raid on an apartment in Munich, Germany uncovered hundreds of priceless paintings that had been stolen by the Nazis. The apartment belonged to Cornelius Gurlitt, a man whose father was one of four art dealers tasked by the Nazis with selling the looted artworks.
The works from the "Gurlitt collection" are currently on display in Bonn.