Tate to return stolen painting
THE Tate gallery in London has been ordered to return an oil painting by John Constable that was looted from Hungary during World War 2.
A committee of government-appointed experts said the 1824 work, Beaching a Boat, Brighton, was stolen “by the Germans in 1944 or early 1945” and smuggled out of wartime Hungary.
Their report found the Tate had a moral obligation to return the painting to the family of the original owner, who died in 1958.
This is the first time the gallery has had to return a work that had been stolen from its original owner during the Nazi era.
The committee sharply criticised the gallery for not thoroughly researching the history of the painting, which was donated to the Tate in 1986 by a private collector, PM Rainsford.
The painting had originally belonged to the Jewish Budapest aristocrat Baron Ferenc Hatvany.
Two years ago, the baron’s heirs discovered that the Constable was in the Tate.
They submitted a formal claim to the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport in April last year.
Agnes Pereszetegi, lawyer for the heirs, said they were “delighted” with the committee’s findings.
Hatvany had bought the picture at a Paris auction in 1908.
In 1942, with Budapest threatened by Allied bombing, he put many of his paintings in bank vaults, although others remained in his two main residences.
Two years later, after the German invasion of Hungary, Hatvany went into hiding, where he remained until Soviet troops entered the country in February 1945.
Although Red Army soldiers looted the bank vaults, the committee said it was probable the Constable painting was “taken in the course of anti-Semitic persecution of the collector and his family by the German occupying forces, either from one of his homes or from a bank vault”.
Rainsford obtained the painting in 1962 from Broadway Art Gallery in the Cotswolds, which had in turn acquired it from London art dealers Leger Galleries.
Leger had bought it in January 1962 from a Mr Meyer. According to the committee of experts, all involved in the painting’s sales in the UK appear to have acted in good faith.
The panel, set up to examine Nazi-era spoliation claims, said it was “surprising” that the Tate had not examined the work, since it had had an unclear provenance after the war.
The Hungarian government had also “included the painting on its official list of looted art from the late 1940s”, the report said.
The panel accused the Tate of withholding information about the work from the heirs.
The Tate said it was “pleased to follow the conclusions” of the panel and would recommend to its trustees that the Constable be returned. —