Footnotes

"Le Marché" 

• A work by Camille Pissarro, stolen from France in 1981 is on its way back after a United States forfeiture proceeding (previous discussion here).
• Princeton has announced the return of six antiquities with questionable histories to Italy.
• Maya remains and objects were discovered in Belize during a construction project. 
• An investment art fraud scheme has been uncovered in Australia.
• Can nuclear physics determine whether a piece of art is genuine?
• Thieves have stolen 2 works of art from an Olympia, Washington art gallery by breaking and entering through a skylight.
• UNESCO has threatened to revoke world heritage status for Seville because of a decision to build a new 40-story building.

Profile of Claude Cassirer

In September of last year the 9th Circuit held that Claude Cassirer can pursue a case against the Kingdom of Spain over this work, Rue St.-Honoré, Après-Midi, Effet de Pluie, painted by Camille Pissarro in 1897.  In a profile of Cassirer in the L.A. Times, the 88 year-old argues the Spanish "have been most unfriendly, not cooperative in any way," with respect to his claims for restitution.  The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear the appeal again en banc, with an 11 judge panel, sometime in the coming months.  The work had been taken from Cassirer's grandmother in 1939 before she fled Munich.  The Spanish government purchased the painting in 1993 as a part of the Baron Hans-Heinrich Thyssen Bornemisza's collection.  The work has been valued now at $20 million. 

Spain paid the baron $50 million in 1988 to lease his collection for a decade, and halfway through bought it outright. The baron had designated Spain for his prized collection, valued at more than $2 billion, an apparently sentimental gesture honoring the last of his five wives, a former Spanish beauty queen. Thyssen-Bornemisza died in 2002.

"The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation thoroughly reviewed the complete historical record on Mr. Cassirer's alleged claim and respectfully denied it," said Thaddeus J. Stauber of Nixon Peabody LLP's Los Angeles office, which represents the foundation.

Citing the statute granting foreign states immunity from U.S. lawsuits except under a few defined conditions, Stauber said "we do not think that the case properly belongs in the U.S. courts."

1.  Carol J. Williams, Pissarro masterpiece travels a twisted history, L.A. Times, April 7, 2010.
2. Cassirer v. Kingdom of Spain, 580 F.3d 1048 (9th Cir. 2009).

A Pisarro Hidden for 70 Years to be Auctioned

Camille Pissarro's Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps (pictured), previously discussed here, recently recovered from a Zurich bank vault will go on sale later this month according to Catherine Hickley for Bloomberg:

 Gisela Bermann-Fischer waited almost 70 years to get back a painting by Camille Pissarro stolen from her family’s home in Vienna by the Gestapo in 1938. 


She recovered “Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps” after a quest that pitched her into a battle of lawyers’ letters with Bruno Lohse, a Nazi art dealer appointed by Hermann Goering to loot treasures in occupied France, and finally led to a Zurich bank vault, where the picture was stashed in a safe. Prosecutors sealed the safe as part of a continuing three-nation probe into associates of Lohse suspected of extortion and money-laundering. 

Now 80, Bermann-Fischer will auction the 1903 painting at Christie’s International’s sale of impressionist and modern art in London on June 23. Its value is estimated at between 900,000 pounds ($1.45 million) and 1.5 million pounds. Bermann-Fischer says it cost her at least 500,000 Swiss francs ($466,000) to recover the Pissarro, mainly in lawyers’ fees. At no point during her quest could she be sure of getting the artwork back.

One of the intriguing parts of the story was the brief resurfacing of the work in 1984:

“I don’t think we’ll ever find out from where to where the painting was transported over the years,” Bermann-Fischer said. “It truly was hidden. I think the exhibition at l’Hermitage Lausanne in 1984 was a test run, to see whether the original owners or any heirs were still on the lookout for the paintings and would make a claim.”

The Difficulty of Nazi Spoliation Research

Camille Pissarro's Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps (pictured), was owned by a Jewish book publisher in 1938 in Austria. When he fled Austria, the work was lost. A history professor, Jonathan Petropoulos has been involved in attempts to return the works to the descendants.

Last week, Elise Viebeck a student reporter at Claremont McKenna College reported that Petropoulos will resign as director of the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights.

Yesterday Mike Boehm a LA Times Staff Writer picked up the story as well.

The descendant, Gisela Bermann Fischer, has accused Petropoulos of trying to extort 18% of the work's value as payment for "facilitating" its return. It seems Petropoulos hoped to end controversy and spare the Holocaust center and Claremont McKenna College any more distraction. It seems his involvement may be more than a mere "distraction" as Swiss authorities are holding the painting as evidence in an ongoing German investigation into possible extortion by Petropoulos and a German art dealer, Peter Griebert. The LA Times Story has the details according to Petropoulos:

Petropoulos said he got involved at the behest of Fischer and the Art Loss Register, a London-based company that keeps a database of stolen art and in some cases helps to get it back.

In December 2006, he said, he met in Munich with Griebert, whom he knew as an art-business associate of Lohse. Griebert, the professor said, was now apparently angry with the ex-Nazi. Petropoulos said Griebert told him about papers he'd found showing that Lohse had sold the Pissarro in 1957 to a man who bequeathed it to a foundation in Lichtenstein.

Working for what he said was his customary consultant's fee of $350 an hour plus expenses, Petropoulos said he reported the news to his client, the Art Loss Register, which was then negotiating a contract with Fischer to recover the painting. The professor said he did more sleuthing on his own, with a view to recovering the Pissarro and gathering material for a book.

In late January 2007, he said, he viewed, authenticated and photographed the painting in the conference room of a Zurich bank. He also said he dined with Fischer and Griebert later that day and that they reached a deal: Fischer, who'd had a falling out with the Art Loss Register, would sell the Pissarro at Christie's in New York and Griebert would get his customary 10% art dealer's fee.

Both Julian Radcliffe and prominent restitution attorney E. Randol Schoenberg are quoted as saying Petropolous got himself too involved in the negotiations to return the work, rather than simply do the research for the fee which had been agreed upon. The seems to have been a miscommunication at some point, and the "champagne" agreement that Petropolous thought he was entitled to rely upon was it seems not reduced to writing, and in return Petropolous refused perhaps to continue to bring the parties together.

The ultimate issue I suppose is what kind of compensation these kinds of experts can and should claim. The lawyers involved, and the Art Loss Register all take a healthy commission; and Petropolous certainly seems to have been amply compensated for his time at $350/hour. Though there may be powerful historical, legal and ethical arguments compelling the restitution of these Nazi spoliated works, we should perhaps bear in mind that it is the very large sums of money they fetch at acution which is driving these restitution efforts.

Related Posts:

Dividing a Nazi Art Dealer's Collection

Compensation for Restitution Experts

Compensation for Restitution Experts

Elise Viebeck, a student writer for the Claremont Independent has an outstanding article about the conflicts of interest which arise when history and art history experts are brought in to assist the heirs of victims who lost valuable art to the Nazis during World War II. She details the actions of a CMC History Professor, Jonathan Petropoulos.

The article asks an important question: How should these experts, whose specialized knowledge can bring about the restitution of ultra-valuable masterworks be compensated? Swiss prosecutor Ivo Hoppler raided a Swiss safe in the Summer of 2007 as part of a "three-nation probe of a German art dealer accused of conspiring with an American at historian to withold a painting by French impressionist". I talked about the discovery of the work at issue, Camille Pisarro's Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps last summer, but was unaware of this controversy.

Here's an excerpt of Viebeck's interesting story:

The story of the Pissarro begins with Zurich resident Gisela Fischer, 78, who is of Jewish descent. She and her family fled Vienna in 1938 two days after the Nazi Anschluss. The Gestapo looted their home, and among the stolen items was a painting by impressionist Camille Pissarro, Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps.

After the war, Fischer's father successfully located and reclaimed many of his family's stolen assets. After her father's death in 1995, Fischer concentrated her efforts on the Pissarro which had remained elusive. In early 2001, she registered the painting with the Art Loss Register (ALR), a London-based for-profit company involved in stolen art recovery.

The ALR began to research the painting's provenance, or history of ownership, in the hope of ascertaining its location. There was no initial financial arrangement, as at that time the ALR did not charge for Holocaust and World War II art claims...

On January 8, 2007, at a meeting in Munich, a representative of the ALR gave Fischer a message from Petropoulos. He wrote in a letter dated December 7, 2006 that he had located the painting in Switzerland and was communicating with an unnamed contact of its owner. The owner was a "foundation created by the heirs of the person who purchased [the painting] in 1957."

The foundation, he wrote, wished to remain anonymous.

Two days after the meeting in Munich, Radcliffe also sent Fischer a letter, this time to request a finder's fee for the organization's success in finding the Pissarro in Switzerland. Despite its earlier commitment not to charge Holocaust claimants, the company had changed its charging policy for Holocaust art claims, telling claimants that the company could complete restitution "at far less cost and often more efficiently" than the expensive lawyers who took some cases. The meeting with the ALR in January 2007 was the first Fischer knew of the ALR's changed policy...

For the Pissarro case, Radcliffe proposed an elaborate compensation scheme, including 20 percent of the first $1 million, 15 percent of the second million and 10 percent of any additional value of the painting. Included in his price was a stipend for Professor Petropoulos, who had requested $100,000 from the ALR for his services.

In a letter dated January 23, Fischer's lawyer, Dr. Norbert Kückelmann, rejected the ALR's proposal. Three days later Petropoulos met with Fischer at the Hotel St. Gotthart in Zurich to try a new arrangement...

Radcliffe and Sarah Jackson of the Art Loss Register also went to Zurich, only to find themselves excluded from the dealings. "We went expecting to be included in the meetings with Ms. Fischer only to discover that they had already had meetings without us. We realized we had been cut out," Radcliffe told the CI.

At the hotel, Petropoulos and Peter Griebert, a Munich art dealer, showed her digital photos of the Pissarro, claiming to have taken them that morning. According to an account published in ARTNews magazine, they did not give further details about its location or the identity of its owners at that time.

It's a very interesting account, and I don't think Petropoulos, nor even the Art Loss Register are painted in a favorable light based on this account. Though much nazi restitution litigation rests on the assumption that the law should compensate the victims of the holocaust and other misappropriation, the engine driving these claims are the large sums of money these works can bring at auction. I think an interesting issue which needs to be researched in more detail is how and to what extent these restitution experts owe a duty to claimants.

The Rape of Europa

This new film, "The Rape of Europa" is just being released in New York this week, and should start to make the art house circuit soon. Metacritic seems to be giving the film good marks so far.

It details the spoliation by the Nazis, and the efforts of allied soldiers known as the monument men to track down the works. The theft was on such a grand scale that the issues are still fresh today. Poland and Germany have engaged in a very bitter dispute in recent weeks. The death of Bruno Lohse revealed he had been storing a looted Pissarro in a Swiss bank vault since the end of the war. The Altmann case and the Klimts are given a prominent role as well.

I am eager to see the film, but just watching this trailer I'm struck by how much more powerful images and music are than the articles I write. I can give an academic view, but seeing the works and the black and white pictures bring the story much more depth and emotion. Whether that produces better cultural policy solutions is questionable I think. Perhaps we are allowing emotion to cloud our judgment in some of these cases?

I haven't seen the film of course, but we shouldn't put the blame on Germany alone, though they do rightfully deserve the most criticism. The loss of art and antiquities is an inevitable part of conflict. Russian forces plundered countless works from East Germany, and allied bombs destroyed medieval buildings in Dresden and at Montecassino. An American GI also stole the Quedlinberg treasures, and his family was able to sell them back to the church in the 90's. In the end, the movie should speak to a fundamental question which still plagues us: what is the value of cultural property? Is it essential to a people's heritage? Is it worth sacrificing lives or other economic development?

The NY Times has a short overview, as does Lee Rosenbaum.

Dividing a Nazi Art Dealer's Collection

Catherine Hickley wrote a very interesting article for Bloomberg on the efforts by France, Germany and Switzerland to divide Bruno Lohse's art collection. Here is an excerpt:

Bruno Lohse, a German art dealer appointed by Hermann Goering to acquire looted art in occupied France, dispersed his private collection of Dutch 17th-century masterpieces and expressionist paintings among friends and relatives in his will, the lawyer handling his estate said.

Lohse died on March 19, aged 95, and has since become the focus of a three-nation investigation into a looted Camille Pissarro painting discovered in a Swiss bank safe that was seized by Zurich prosecutors on May 15. The painting's prewar owners said the Gestapo stole it from their Vienna apartment in 1938. Lohse controlled the Liechtenstein trust that rented the safe.

``Paintings have been willed to relatives and friends in individual bequests,'' Willy Hermann Burger, the executor of Lohse's will, said in an interview at his home in Munich. Burger, who declined to name the beneficiaries or disclose details on individual artworks, said he's sure none of the paintings in Lohse's private collection are looted.

Lohse became Paris-based deputy director of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the Nazis' specialist art-looting unit, in 1942, according to the interrogation report compiled by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services' Art Looting Investigation Unit, which questioned him in Austria from June 15 to Aug. 15, 1945.

The E.R.R. plundered about 22,000 items in France alone, according to the O.S.S. reports. The Jewish Claims Conference estimates that the Nazis looted about 650,000 artworks in total.

``There is a lot of art still missing and we believe that a significant proportion remains in private collections, especially in Germany and Austria,'' said Anne Webber, co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, a not-for-profit organization based in London that helps families recover plundered property.

Adding to the difficulty is the fact that Lohse became an art dealer in the 1950's, and thus most of his private collection is probably legitimate. However, the Pisarro found in the Swiss bank vault, Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps is probably looted, at least according to the Art Loss Register. This all underscores the importance of establishing and checking provenance for works of art when they are sold or donated. If the various European prosecutors are not as aggressive as their American counterparts have been, a lengthy and complex legal dispute between the successor and the descendants of the original1938 owner will likely ensue.