Germany Returns Three Paintings Once Owned by the Notorious Art Dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt to a Jewish Collector’s Heirs

• 01.17.2020, 09:31
•  Europe,  World

ria.ru

Germany will return three paintings to the heirs of a French-Jewish collector whose art was looted by the Nazis. The works all passed through the hands of the notorious German art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt. Two were found in the Munich hoard of his son, Cornelius Gurlitt; the third was in a private collection in Southern Germany, Artnet reports.

The works stolen from the lawyer and art collector Armand Dorville (1875–1941) are by the French Impressionist painter Jean-Louis Forain. A watercolor, Lady in an Evening Gown, and the oil painting Portrait of a Lady in Profile were both recovered from Cornelius Gurlitt’s Munich apartment in 2012. They are the latest works that passed through the now-notorious stash to be returned to their rightful owners at a time when Germany is publicly making an effort to boost its research into works looted during WWII.

The drawing Amazon With Rearing Horse by the Dutch artist Constantin Guys was in the collection of Hildebrand Gurlitt for a time before it ended up in a private German collection. The restitution of the works is due to take place in Berlin on January 22 in the presence of German culture minister Monika Grütters. Her office declined to comment on this story.

After the German occupation of France in 1940, the Nazis seized thousands of works of art or forced their owners to sell them for bargain prices. Dorville’s collection was dispersed across Europe, ending up in private hands and prominent institutions. A curator at the Louvre bought a dozen piece in a four-day auction of Dorville’s collection in 1942, one year after he died, according the New York Times. Several works from the Louvre received restitution claims from Dorville’s heirs just last year.

According to Germany’s Lost Art Database, Forain’s Lady in Profile was acquired by a Parisian art dealer, Raphaël Gérard, in April 1944. Hildebrand Gurlitt acquired the work sometime after 1953. The Lost Art Database speculates that Forain’s other work, Lady in Evening Gown, may have been acquired by Hildebrand in France in the 1940s, though it is unclear if it was from the forced auction.