go through Katherine Armstrong, bbc news
Claude MonetA leading Swiss art museum said it will remove five paintings from one of its exhibitions while it investigates whether they were looted by the Nazis.
The works, part of the Kunsthalle Zurich collection, are by some of the world’s most acclaimed artists, including Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh.
There have long been doubts about the provenance of Emile Bouller’s collection. The Emil Buehrle Collection is named after a German-born arms dealer who made his fortune manufacturing and selling weapons to the Nazis during World War II.
The decision to remove the paintings follows the publication of new guidelines aimed at dealing with the large number of cultural works that have not yet been returned to families where they were stolen.
Artworks under investigation include: Claude Monet’s “The Garden of Giverny”, Gustave Courbet’s Portrait of the Sculptor Louis-Joseph, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Georges Henri · Manuel, Vincent Van Gogh’s “Old Tower” and “La Route” Paul Gauguin’s Montete.
The board of directors of the Emile Boulle Collection Foundation said in a statement that it is “committed to following best practices and working with the legal heirs of the former owners to find a fair and equitable solution for these works.”
The sixth work in the series, “La Sultane” by Edouard Manet, has also come under further scrutiny, but the foundation said it did not believe the new guidelines applied to it, And the painting will be considered individually.
“Given the overall historical circumstances associated with this sale, the Foundation is prepared to make a financial contribution to the estate of Max Silberberg in order to commemorate the tragic fate of the former owner,” the statement read.
Silberberg was a German Jewish industrialist whose large art collection was forced to be auctioned off by the Nazis. He is believed to have been murdered at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz during the Holocaust.
There has been controversy over whether Silberberg was forced to sell Sudan or whether he sold voluntarily for financial reasons, according to Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
Ulstein Pictures Dtl/Getty ImagesMore than 20 countries, including Switzerland, agreed earlier this year New Best Practices from the U.S. Department of State About what to do with art looted by the Nazis.
They were issued to mark the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the 1998 Washington Conference Principles, which set out a set of principles aimed at compensation for items stolen or forcibly sold.
These principles are an important recourse for families seeking to recover looted art, as under Swiss law there are currently no legal claims for restitution or compensation for works in the Bürle collection due to statute of limitations.
Announcing best practices in March, Stuart Eizenstat, the U.S. Secretary of State’s special adviser on the Holocaust, said that “more than 100,000 of the estimated 600,000 paintings, as well as millions of books, manuscripts “More than 100,000 pieces of ceremonial and religious objects” and other stolen cultural relics have never been returned.
By the time of his death in 1956, Buehrle had collected approximately 600 works of art. Much of it is managed by the Buehrle Foundation and is on display at the gallery as part of a 20-year loan.
The rest are said to hang in the homes of surviving relatives in Buele.
