Scotland’s galleries linked to art looted by Nazis
DOZENS of paintings looted by the Nazis could be hanging in Scotland’s best known art galleries and museums.
Works by masters such as Van Gogh, Monet and Picasso are among those whose provenance is potentially suspect.
And for some, there is said to be ‘circumstantial evidence’ suggesting possible links to Adolf Hitler’s regime.
It comes as the Scottish Government investigates whether a chandelier in the drawing room of the First Minister’s official residence, Bute House, was plundered from Nazi Germany.
It also follows a pledge by Glasgow City Council to com- pensate a Jewish woman’s estate after a tapestry in the Burrell Collection was found to have been looted from her family by the Nazis.
Dozens of artworks in the National Galleries of Scotland are potentially suspect, while in the National Gallery in Edinburgh there are concerns over 18 world famous paintings, including Van Gogh’s Head of a Peasant Woman, Boats in a Harbour by Monet and the Degas painting A Group of Dancers.
Doubts also remain over a further 58 pieces at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.
DOZENS of artworks hanging in Scotland’s best known museums and galleries could be linked to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.
Paintings by masters such as Van Gogh, Degas, Monet and Picasso are among those whose provenance is in doubt – and for some there is ‘circumstantial evidence’ pointing to possible plundering during the Third Reich.
It comes as the Scottish Government investigates whether a chandelier in the First Minister’s official residence, Bute House, was looted from Nazi Germany.
It also follows a pledge by Glasgow City Council to compensate a Jewish woman’s estate after a tapestry in the Burrell Collection was found to have been confiscated from her family by the Nazis.
Last night, experts said it was unlikely Scotland’s museums would ever be sure that some works were not plundered.
Dozens of pieces in the National Galleries of Scotland buildings in Edinburgh are potentially suspect. In the National Gallery there are concerns about 18 paintings, including Van Gogh’s Head of a Peasant
‘Guilty until proven innocent’
Woman, Boats in a Harbour by Monet and Degas’s A Group of Dancers.
Doubts remain over 58 pieces at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, including three by Kandinsky, three by Matisse, two each by Klimt, Klee and Munch, and a Picasso.
Lists of artwork of unknown provenance are held for Kelvingrove Art Gallery, the Burrell Collection and the Hunterian, all in Glasgow. The Kelvingrove list includes works by Renoir, Pissaro, Cezanne and Gauguin.
Aberdeen Art Gallery’s l i st i ncludes Renoir’s La Roche Guyon and a bronze sculpture by Degas.
Among the pieces causing most concern is the National Gallery’s Washerwomen on the Banks of the Touques by Boudin. It is believed to have passed through the hands of Nazi-linked dealer Raphael Garard in Paris in 1937. Trees in the Snow by Courbet, which hangs in the same building, was sold in Paris in 1949 by Alfred Daber, who appears on lists of suspect art dealers.
Van Gogh’s Head of a Peasant Woman was bought in London in 1923 before being sold by an unknown seller in London in 1951. On the back of the canvas there are stamps indicating it was in the German cities of Frankfurt and Hamburg in the intervening years.
A spokesman for the National Galleries of Scotland said it had adopted a ‘guilty until proven innocent’ approach to the question of whether its pieces were tainted by ‘World War Two spoliation’.
He added: ‘Like all other UK and most international museums, we publish lists of works in our collections for which we have an incomplete documentary history covering the period 1933-1945.
‘ While we have extensively researched these works, the lack of available evidence does not allow us to discount the possibility that they have a suspect or “looted” provenance. It may be that conclusive evidence is never found for many of the works on the lists. Over the years we have had a handful of inquiries but so far nothing that has led to a claim from any previous owner.’
A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said its museums were among the f i rst i n Britain to research its artworks for possible Nazi links. Since 1998, two pieces proved to have been looted.
One was a 16th century Swiss tapestry identified last week as having been taken by the Nazis. The other was a painting called Still Life, attributed to JeanBaptiste-Simeon Chardin, which was ruled to be Nazi loot in 2004.
The National Trust for Scotland (NTS), which owns Bute House, said there was ‘no conclusive evidence’ that the chandelier, believed to have been ‘found’ in the town of Cleves after the war, was plundered.
But Holocaust research organisation the Simon Wiesenthal Center raised fears over its provenance in a report suggesting that it may have been ‘looted’.
A Scottish Government spokesman said it ‘deplored’ the looting of artworks, and added: ‘The NTS has established that it has no further information in its archives about the chandelier’s provenance beyond the information already made public. We will establish whether there are any further sources of information that may offer further insight.’
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