A painting by Claude Monet, stolen from Paris dealer Paul Rosenberg during World War Two, is now at the centre of another controversy regarding Jewish-owned works of art pillaged by the Nazis. The daily "Le Monde" reported that the Monet painting,
"Nympheas" produced in 1904, was now in the French museum of Caen, Normandy, which has loaned it to the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston for a Monet exhibition.
The painting was held by the Louvre Museum under number 214 and was deposited in the Caen Museum in 1975. Still, this work was stolen by the Nazis from the Paul Rosenberg collection on September 15th 1940 and transferred to the German Embassy with a series of other paintings. It was then in the possession of German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.
Surprisingly, neither the Louvre or the Caen museums managed to determine during over 50 years that this painting effectively belonged to Rosenberg whose heirs might now ask for its seizure in Massachussets where it is currently exhibited.
Several French museums have been holding Jewish-owned art works stolen by the Nazis during the war.
The National Georges Pompidou Museum of Modern Art, has recently given back a painting by Albert Gleizes (1881-1953) and another by Francis Picabia (1879-1953) to the heirs of Alphonse Kann whereas several hundreds works are still awaiting their restitution. However, their owners have not been identified yet.
The heirs of Alphonse Kann have also asked for the restitution of "The Guitar Player", stolen by the Nazis, and now held by the National Museum of Modern Art.
The museum has refused to surrender this important work worth at least US $ 50 million which it acquired in 1981 and such attitude has prompted the heirs of Alphonse Kann to enact a legal action on November 30th 1998.
They said the museum should have known that the painting had been stolen during the war as French official archives suggested. According to Rose Valland, the Louvre Museum curator, the Braque painting was handed over in March 1942 to a collaborationist dealer in exchange for another work coveted by Marshall Goering.
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