The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam says it’ll return an Henri Matisse portray that has been in its assortment since 1941 to the heirs of its former proprietor, a German-Jewish textile producer and artwork patron who offered it to fund his household’s escape of the Netherlands’ Nazi occupation.
The museum introduced the return of the work, “Odalisque,” on Tuesday after the Amsterdam Metropolis Council obtained “binding recommendation” from the Dutch Restitutions Fee, a authorities committee that guidelines on instances of Nazi-looted artwork.
The heirs stated in a press release that the choice supplied symbolic justice. “The Matisse underwent the identical journey from Berlin to Amsterdam as our grandparents,” they stated. “However it stopped there within the Stedelijk, with nearly no acknowledgment from whence it got here for 80 years.”
Earlier than World Battle II, Matisse’s “Odalisque,” dated 1920-21, was a part of the non-public artwork assortment of Albert and Marie Stern. Albert and his brother Siegbert had helped set up a number one Berlin womenswear firm within the nineteenth century. Albert and Marie have been patrons of the humanities and recurrently hosted artwork and music occasions at their Berlin house. Marie, who had studied artwork, assembled a set that additionally included works by Vincent van Gogh and Edward Munch.
After the Nationwide Socialists took energy in Germany in 1933, the Sterns suffered a number of antisemitic blows. The state expropriated their enterprise and stole a lot of their property and possessions, and the household was threatened with bodily violence, stated Anne Webber, the founder and co-chair of the Fee for Looted Artwork in Europe, which dealt with the restitution declare.
In 1937, in response to the Fee, the couple moved to Amsterdam, taking alongside a few of their possessions, whereas making use of for visas to international locations together with Cuba, Mexico and america, finally unsuccessfully. By July 1941, the household had little meals, and offered every part that they had left within the hopes of escaping Europe.
The Matisse was offered in 1941 to the Stedelijk by way of a household good friend. Shortly afterward, your complete Stern household was arrested and despatched to focus camps, the place Albert’s twin sister, the couple’s two grown sons and plenty of different relations have been murdered.
The couple’s grandchildren, ages 5 and 16 months, have been despatched to Theresienstadt camp in what’s now the Czech Republic however managed to outlive, in response to the Fee. Marie, who was despatched to Liebenau camp in Germany, additionally survived the battle, however Albert was killed in Laufen Fort internment camp.
“The unrelenting strain they skilled from the Nazis, and the strain that they confronted, the looming risk to their lives, was very highly effective,” Webber stated in an interview.
“They have been bodily threatened over a interval of many months,” she added. “We did an enormous quantity of analysis and located a exceptional variety of paperwork in some 26 completely different archives that inform this story.”
Toon van Mierlo, the chair of the Restitutions Fee, stated the proof of a compelled sale on this case was extremely compelling.
“The circumstances wherein Albert Stern lived in Amsterdam, after he fled Germany, have been horrible, horrible,” he stated. “He did his utmost to get his household to security in good order, however he couldn’t, and at last he died on the finish of the battle.”
Of the Matisse restitution, van Mierlo stated, “My feeling is that justice has been accomplished.”
Matisse’s “Odalisque” hangs within the museum’s everlasting assortment show, subsequent to different odalisques — or reclining nudes — painted in the identical interval by Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky.
“We don’t have many Matisses, so it’s an necessary work,” stated Rein Wolfs, the Stedelijk Museum’s director, “which reveals the significance of Orientalism in French portray.”
He declined to estimate the work’s financial worth, however he stated its private historical past outweighed monetary concerns.
“It’s crucial that we’re in a position to restitute this work,” Wolfs stated. “It doesn’t restore what came about through the wartime, however not less than some justice will be accomplished, so a few years later.”
Town of Amsterdam, the Matisse’s official proprietor, is predicted at hand the work over to Stern’s relations earlier than the tip of the yr, a Stedelijk spokeswoman stated.
“The return of artistic endeavors, such because the Odalisque portray, can imply so much to the victims and is of nice significance for the popularity of the injustice accomplished to them,” Amsterdam’s alderwoman for tradition, Touria Meliani, stated in a press release. “As a metropolis we’ve got a job and duty on this.”