Collector’s heir forced to sell painting taken by Nazis

‘If I had enough money to buy it back, I would – but justice has been done with the painting’s recovery’

THE great-granddaughter of a Jewish art collector who lost possessions to the Nazis in Paris in the Second World War is having to sell a painting of his that she recovered from a German museum earlier this year.

Pauline Baer de Perignon tracked down an 18th-century French masterpiece by Nicolas de Largillière to the Dresden State Art Collections and unearthed archival evidence to prove that Jules Strauss, her great-grandfather, had been forced to sell it.

But now she must sell it as 20 heirs are entitled to a share of it.

On Jan 27, Sotheby’s New York will auction the Portrait of a Lady as Pomona, painted between 1710 and 1714. It is expected to fetch around £1million.

The Paris-born artist had moved to England in 1675, where he worked with Sir Peter Lely, and his portraits are in the world’s most important public collections, including the National Gallery in London.

Ms Baer de Perignon told The Sunday Telegraph that, having been briefly reunited with this rare tangible link to her great-grandfather, made the sale particularly painful: “If I’d had enough money to buy it back, I would have done – but justice has been done with the painting’s recovery.”

Tracking it down and learning of Strauss’s wartime plight inspired her to write a book, titled The Vanished Collection, which Head of Zeus in the UK will publish in February.

The research had been difficult because she knew little to nothing about him or his collection, which the family just assumed he had sold.

It was only in 2014 that her interest was sparked by a relative’s suggestion that the Nazis had “robbed” it.

Strauss, a Frankfurt-born banker, spent his adult life in France, building up an extraordinary collection, ranging from antiquities to the Impressionists, some of which was stolen or forcibly sold by the Nazis.

His Paris home was also requisitioned, but he somehow avoided deportation before dying of ill-health in 1943.

His great-granddaughter was to discover that the Largillière portrait was acquired in 1941 for the German Reichsbank Berlin and transferred to the Ministry of Finance, eventually going to Dresden in 1959.

In her book, she details the detective work, searching archives, building a dossier of documentary evidence.

“The more I proceeded with my investigation, the more I realised how unlikely it was that Jules had been able to avoid his collection being seized by the Nazis … Even before the invasion of France, the Germans had drawn up a list of major French collections.”

Ms Baer de Perignon writes of the “utter astonishment” of discovering the words “Collection Jules Strauss” next to the Largillière’s listing in the German Lost Art Foundation, and of going to Dresden, only to find that the museum’s director was “not keen to return” it.

“His questions remain engraved in my memory … ‘Perhaps Herr Strauss was happy to have sold his painting for a decent price?’ he said.

“I reminded the museum director, calmly, of the anti-Jewish laws of October 1940, blocked bank accounts, Aryanized businesses.”

She added that there followed “tense, difficult discussion” and “it took four years to get it back”.

“We had to justify our cause and furnish evidence that the painting belonged to the family and had been stolen by the Nazis.”

Dresden eventually agreed that this was a forced sale and, in January, returned the portrait from its Old Masters Picture Gallery.

Sotheby’s called the painting a tour de force that exhibits the artist’s ability to capture prominent members of Parisian society with elegance and beauty.

The Dresden State Art Collections said: “The research on this complex case was vast and thorough, as is necessary, in order to ensure that a work of art is returned to its rightful owner.”