Vincent van Gogh is back in the spotlight again this week as the heirs of a Jewish collector sued the Metropolitan Museum of Art and… Basil and Elise Golandris Foundation In Athens for the return of a painting allegedly looted by the Nazis.
A San Francisco federal court filing claims the Met secretly sold an 1889 Van Gogh painting La cueillette des olives (The picking of olives) circa 1972 without the knowledge of its original owner, Hedwig Stern, who reportedly sought to retrieve it. It is currently on display at the Athens Museum run by the late Greek shipping magnate Basil Goulandris and his wife Elise.
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Plaintiffs – Judith Silver and Deborah Silver; Kofi, Sekai, and Mary Lee; Walter and Daniel Henrickson, Dorritt and Ilan Marx – V.I 13-page complaint Van Gogh’s painting of Stern was confiscated by the Third Reich when she fled Munich for Berkeley, California, with her husband, Fritz, and children in 1936.
In 1938, the Nazis appointed Stern’s former lawyer, Kurt Mosbacher, to liquidate her estate, which included Van Gogh and a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The works were sold by the “Aryan” Tannhauser Gallery, whose work had been transferred from the previous Jewish owner, Justin Thannhauser, to German art dealer Paul Romer. Van Gogh and Renoir were sold by Roemer to Theodor Werner for 55,000 Reichsmarks.
After the end of World War II, Stern allegedly searched for her collection, but both paintings were actually sold, with Van Gogh going to Vincent Astor in New York in 1948. The Met later purchased them from the Knoedler Gallery in 1956.
The report filed with the complaint by Jonathan Petropoulos — a historian and leading expert on what the Nazis looted — argues that Theodore Russo, chief curator of the Met and an expert on Nazi art, agreed to scrap the work thereafter. Its dubious provenance emerged.
the The New York Times He broke the news of the secret sale in 1972, describing it as an “extraordinary procedure”, as the Met had “never before disposed of works of the Van Gogh quality”. The buyer was reported to be Gianni Agnelli, an “Italian industrialist” and fellow Marlboro Gallery. Thomas Hoving, then director of the museum, said the proceeds had been used “to buy wonderful things by masters we simply don’t own and [which] It will never be available again,” as Diego Velazquez’s painting.
The explanation failed to satisfy skeptics in the art community, the Art Dealers Association of America Call The sale is considered a “breach of public confidence”, as the revocation of important works must be publicly announced to give other art institutions the first opportunity to acquire.
In 2018, the paper obituary For another former Met curator, Everett Fahy, he priced the Van Gogh painting, one of only 15 paintings of the olive tree that the famous impressionist painted while in Saint-Rémy mental asylum, at $250,000.
In a statement to Artnet News, a spokesperson for The Met said Van Gogh “went bankrupt in a widely reported sale in 1972 that was part of a wide-ranging and controversial effort to raise acquisition funds.”
She continued, “Sell picking olivesIt met the Museum’s strict criteria for annulment of succession – specifically, it was recorded that the work was considered to be of lower quality than other works of a similar type in the collection. While the Met respectfully stands by its position that this work has entered the collection and has been legally de-accredited and in all guidelines and policies, the Museum welcomes and will consider any new information that emerges.”
The Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.
The painting has been displayed at the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation location in Athens since at least June 2022, according to the complaint. Prosecutors say attempts to track his location were unsuccessful and neither organization hesitated to provide information. Goulandris’ business dealings were highlighted in the 2016 Panama Papers leak, which reported that their $3 billion art collection had been diverted to numerous shell companies.
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