The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam will return a Henri Matisse portray to the heirs of a Jewish textile producer who offered the piece whereas fleeing Nazi Germany.
The establishment introduced on June 25 that the Dutch Restitutions Committee had revealed its binding recommendation on the restitution of Matisse’ Odalisque (1920/21) to the authorized successors of Albert Stern. The committee concluded “it’s sufficiently believable that the sale of the portray was related to the measures taken by the occupying forces in opposition to Jewish members of the inhabitants and arose from a need for self-preservation.”
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Stern’s heirs had been represented by the Fee for Looted Artwork in Europe. The group mentioned in an announcement that the investigation it performed “conclusively demonstrated that the household was subjected to persecution from 1933 onwards, first in Germany the place they lived after which from 1937 within the Netherlands the place that they had fled and the place they had been steadily stripped of their possessions and their livelihood. They made a number of unsuccessful efforts to flee and ultimately had been compelled to promote their remaining possessions to attempt to survive.”
Earlier than the Nazis took energy, Stern’s profession as a textile producer in Germany was extremely profitable, particularly his firm’s retail gross sales and exports of ready-to-wear ladies’s clothes.
Albert’s spouse Marie had studied artwork and portray earlier than their marriage, and was chargeable for the couple’s assortment of recent and modern artwork.
The assertion from the Fee for Looted Artwork in Europe mentioned the Nazis took Stern’s enterprise, its constructing, the household’s residence, its possessions, and most of its property, pushing him and his family members into exile. The Matisse was offered to the Stedelijk Museum as a part of the household’s final efforts to flee Europe in 1941.
Odalisque had been within the assortment of the Stedelijk Museum since then, beneath the possession of the Municipality of the Metropolis of Amsterdam.
The museum acknowledged in its assertion that Stern and his household had been subjected to persecution due to their Jewish heritage, and that they had been “steadily stripped of their possessions and technique of livelihood.” The household, previously primarily based in Berlin, emigrated to the Netherlands between 1936 and 1937.
Because the funds from the sale of Odalisque had been wanted for the Stern household’s makes an attempt to flee, the Restitutions Committee dominated “this was an involuntary lack of possession as a result of circumstances instantly associated to the Nazi regime.”
Albert Stern and his spouse had been ultimately deported to totally different focus camps. Albert died in January 1945 at Laufen. Marie survived and emigrated to the UK after World Warfare II.
“The return of the Matisse is a shifting and overwhelming second for us all,” the Stern heirs mentioned in an announcement, calling the choice “symbolic justice” for Albert. “Our grandparents cherished artwork and music and theatre, it was the centre of their lives. Within the few years we had with our grandmother after the warfare, she transmitted that like to us, and it has enriched our lives ever since.”
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam director Rein Wolfs mentioned in a press assertion that there had been questions concerning the provenance of the Matisse portray because it had revealed analysis about works from its assortment across the warfare interval in 2013. He referred to as the restitution a “step ahead.”