Two Dutch Old Master paintings that were looted by the Nazis from the late Max Stern, who owned the Dominion Gallery on Montreal’s Sherbrooke Street, were restituted to his estate in a Dec. 12 ceremony at the Canadian embassy in Berlin.
Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly was present for the return of the artworks, which were pulled from separate German auction house sales. They had been held in private collections.
Both were listed on various international databases of stolen art.
READ: FINDING LOOTED ARTWORKS A HUGE CHALLENGE
Based on an anonymous tip from within the art trade, the Max and Iris Stern Foundation learned that Ships in Distress on a Stormy Sea by Jan Porcellis (1584-1632) was consigned to the Auktionhaus Metz in Heidelberg. Soon after advising the company, contact was made between the German consignor and Stern Foundation representatives from the Holocaust Claims Processing Office (HCPO) of the State of New York Department of Financial Services.
The painting had been sold by force during the Nazi period to secure an exit visa for Stern’s mother. Stern owned an art gallery in Düsseldorf.
The second painting, Landscape with Goats by Willem Buytewech the Younger (1625-1670), was consigned by a German collector to Auktionhaus Stahl in Hamburg. News of the sale was flagged by the German Lost Art Foundation, which, in turn, had been alerted by Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office.
Before the war, the work was sold in Cologne at a forced auction of Stern’s holdings. The Hamburg auctioneers connected the consignors with the HCPO and “again thanks to amicable exchanges the work was returned,” Concordia University said in a statement.
READ: RETURNING NAZI-LOOTED ART IN CANADA
The Max Stern Art Restitution Project has been administered by Concordia since 2002. These are the 14th and 15th paintings recovered during that time.
Stern left the bulk of his estate to Concordia, McGill University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
In June another Stern painting that had been held in a private German collection was returned with the assistance of Düsseldorfer Auktionhaus.
In recognition that, in most cases, looted works were acquired in good faith after the Nazi era, the German Friends of the Hebrew University is developing a program to encourage German possessors of Stern works to return them in exchange for tax certificates.
“It will be the first such initiative ever to be offered to the community of collectors in Germany holding problematic works from the Nazi period,” Concordia said.
