Restitution of two paintings by Renoir and Sisley looted during the Occupation

The Minister of Culture Rachida data must return on Thursday a painting by Auguste Renoir and another by Alfred Sisley to the beneficiaries of a Jewish gallery owner, Grégoire Schusterman (1889-1976), plundered during the Occupation.

These are the Caryatids by Renoir representing two nude women in an art deco style, painted in 1909 and which is a variation of other decorative panels, two of which belong to the Barnes collection in the United States. The gallery owner acquired it at auction in 1939. The second painting, entitled Bargeswas painted in 1870 by the French-born British painter Alfred Sisley and depicts a Normandy port in which barges are moored.

Forced sales

The Commission for Compensation for Victims of Spoliations (CIVS) considered that Grégoire Schusterman “had to sell the two paintings due to anti-Semitic persecution, to flee Paris and survive during the war and that these were therefore forced sales”. She therefore recommended their restitution to her beneficiaries, the Ministry of Culture told AFP.

After the Second World WarTHE Caryatids were recovered by the Allies at Thalhausen Castle in Bavaria. Barges de Sisley were found in the Rhineland. The tables were then “transported to (works collection point) from Munich for the Renoir and to that of Baden-Baden for the Sisley, then repatriated to France. They were selected in 1950 from the last 15,000 works returned from Germany and not returned and became “National Recovery Museums” (MNR) works.according to the ministry.

Since the 1950s, MNR works have been entrusted to museums in France. They are listed and can be returned to the descendants of the robbed owners, often after long procedures, facilitated since 2019 by a mission created specifically within the Ministry of Culture in order to accelerate the difficult research into their provenance.

In 1950, Barges and the Caryatids were entrusted to the custody of Louvre Museum then, in 1986, from the Musée d’Orsay. Sisley’s work was deposited at the Dieppe museum in 1954 and that of Renoir was kept successively at the Masséna museum then at the Jules-Chéret museum of fine arts in Nice and, from 1995, at the Renoir museum in Cagnes- on sea.

“Framework law”

During World War II, the Nazis methodically looted works of art owned by Jews, which were resold, collected by high dignitaries or destined for Hitler’s mega-project “Führermuseum”. In occupied France, the looted works passed through the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris before being sent to Germany. They have also been the subject of significant trafficking, evoked in the cinema by the recent film The stolen painting by Pascal Bonitzer.

Thanks to clandestine notes taken by a conservation officer, Rose Valland Some 60,000 works and objects were recovered in Germany and returned to France, out of an estimate of some 100,000 looted. A number that “seems undervalued, many families not having reported the disappearance of their property to the Liberation”underlines the ministry.

Two-thirds of them, around 45,000, were returned to their owners before 1950. Most of the other pieces were sold, with the exception of some 2,200 unclaimed pieces, temporarily entrusted to the custody of national museums. In total, since 1950, 188 MNR and similar works and objects have been returned.

Unlike MNR works, other looted works entered into public collections could only be returned on a case-by-case basis with the adoption of a specific law, under the principle of inalienability of museum works of art.

A framework law of July 22, 2023 opened an exemption to this principle for property looted in the context of the anti-Semitic persecutions perpetrated between 1933 and 1945. The public owner (State or local authority) can now decide on the restitution of looted property. after advice from an ad hoc administrative commission.