A rare portrait of the early XVII century, depicting musicians playing bagpipes, returned to their rightful owners within 72 years after he was selected by the Nazis

A rare portrait of the early XVII century, depicting musicians playing bagpipes, returned to their rightful owners within 72 years after he was selected by the Nazis. April 21, the Day of Holocaust Remembrance in the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York by representatives of the Prosecutor's Office Southern District of New York, as well as Immigration and Customs Police United States formally handed over this work to the collection of Max Stern (Max Stern), a German Jew who fled Germany in 1937.

In 1930 Gallery Max Stern was one of the largest private collections in Germany. However, after coming to power of the Nazis forced the owner to part with it - more than 200 paintings went under the hammer at an auction Lempertz, and proceeds Stern has never won. Fearing persecution, he fled from Germany and after long wanderings in Europe, settled in Canada. «Portrait of a musician, playing a bagpipe», written in 1632 in the Netherlands was among the works of scattered later in private collections. Some of them had been found, and some even returned to the Stern collection. But the many works still remained unknown.

Thanks to information received by agents of Immigration and Customs of the Police Department with the Banking Department of New York to deal with the claims of Holocaust victims, found that the portrait is probably located in the Manhattan art gallery, owned by Lourenzo Shteygardu (Lawrence Steigard). The police appealed to him under the guise of customers and asked whether he had such a picture. After receiving an affirmative answer, they identified themselves and informed the owner of the gallery that the work was stolen and entered into several databases of stolen works. Shteygard, bought it from a dealer in London for an amount approximately equal to 60 thousand dollars, said that he did not know about it. As a result, he signed the contract, which has agreed to the confiscation of paintings by the Immigration and Customs Police for further transmission to a collection of Max Stern.

This event was another important milestone in the history of the project on the restitution of works from the collection of the Max Stern (Max Stern Restitution Project), in which representatives of Concordia University and McGill University in Montreal, as well as the Hebrew University in Jerusalem . They owned the rights to this collection, because Stern and his wife had no children and they have transferred their assets to support universities and museums in North America and Israel.

material produced Catherine Onuchin

Source: artdaily.com , artinvestment.ru