Nazi-Looted Dutch Painting Returned to Goudstikker Heir

Adam and Eve, a sixteenth-century painting attributed to Dutch master Cornelis van Haarlem and looted by Nazis during World War II from the collection of noted Dutch-Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, has been restored to its rightful owner, theArt Newspaperreports. The painting was returned to Marei von Saher, Goudstikker’s daughter-in-law and only living heir, after staff at the Musée Rolin in Autun, France, which had received the work as a donation, noticed a label on its back identifying it as belonging to the late dealer. The museum then worked with the donor, who had been unaware of its provenance, to return it to von Saher.RelatedDIRECTOR OF ISTANBUL BIENNIAL STEPS DOWN AMID CURATOR CONTROVERSYMET RECEIVES MAJOR GIFT FROM DICK WOLF “The museum really acted in the way that you want museums to be acting; they flagged it, they contacted the family, they were doing the right thing to resolve this in a fair and correct way,” attorney Yaél Weitz, who oversaw the case, told theObserver. “They handled it in a way that we hope other museums will going forward.” Goudstikker, who had amassed a roughly 1,400-piece collection of nineteenth century and old master works, was forced by the circumstances of war to leave Europe in 1940. He died in an accident while fleeing across the English Channel aboard a cargo ship; his wife and son made it safely to North America, but his trove of works fell into the hands of Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second-in-command, via a forced sale. A number of these were returned to the Dutch government, which restored roughly two hundred of them to von Saher in 2006, after she had worked for eight years to obtain them, having tracked them through a little black notebook belonging to Goudstikker, in which he catalogued his collection.

The Musée Rolin on December 13 held a presentation ceremony in recognition of the painting and those who helped return it to von Saher..