The heirs of Paul Rosenberg have demanded the restitution of a painting by Monet stolen from his collection during World War Two, it was learned in Paris on December 2nd 1998. The painting titled " Nymphéas", now held by the French museum of Caen, Normandy, was stolen by the Germans with the help of French collaborationists near Bordeaux on September 5th 1941 while Paris dealer Paul Rosenberg had sought refuge in the U.S.
After the war Paul Rosenberg tried painstakingly to recover all the works that had been pillaged by the Germans. One of these, a painting by Matisse, titled "Odalisque", has resurfaced in the museum of Seattle while the Monet painting was recovered at the end of the war in the collection of German foreign minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop.
This work was then in the care of the Louvre museum which later deposited it in the museum of Caen. It was during an exhibition on Monet in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts that one of the heirs of Paul Rosenberg, his grand-daughter Elisabeth Rosenberg-Clark learned of its presence in the U.S after reading the Boston Globe.
Mrs Rosenberg-Clark has formally demanded its restitution through her counsel and in the names of her mother, Elaine Rosenberg, now living in New York, and of her aunt, Micheline Nanette Rosenberg, who lives in Paris.
The family does not intend to seize the painting in the U.S but is awaiting a gesture from French authorities to hand it back. French authorities have adopted an ambiguous attitude especially at a time when a conference on the restitution of stolen art works during World War Two has been taking place in Washington. French delegates there said the demand formulated by the Rosenberg family was like a dirty trick stressing that if some 2000 works were still in the care of French museums it was because their legitimate owners had not approached them yet.
The heirs of Paul Rosenberg have demanded the restitution of a painting by Monet stolen from his collection during World War Two, it was learned in Paris on December 2nd 1998. The painting titled " Nymphéas", now held by the French museum of Caen, Normandy, was stolen by the Germans with the help of French collaborationists near Bordeaux on September 5th 1941 while Paris dealer Paul Rosenberg had sought refuge in the U.S.
After the war Paul Rosenberg tried painstakingly to recover all the works that had been pillaged by the Germans. One of these, a painting by Matisse, titled "Odalisque", has resurfaced in the museum of Seattle while the Monet painting was recovered at the end of the war in the collection of German foreign minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop.
This work was then in the care of the Louvre museum which later deposited it in the museum of Caen. It was during an exhibition on Monet in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts that one of the heirs of Paul Rosenberg, his grand-daughter Elisabeth Rosenberg-Clark learned of its presence in the U.S after reading the Boston Globe.
Mrs Rosenberg-Clark has formally demanded its restitution through her counsel and in the names of her mother, Elaine Rosenberg, now living in New York, and of her aunt, Micheline Nanette Rosenberg, who lives in Paris.
The family does not intend to seize the painting in the U.S but is awaiting a gesture from French authorities to hand it back. French authorities have adopted an ambiguous attitude especially at a time when a conference on the restitution of stolen art works during World War Two has been taking place in Washington. French delegates there said the demand formulated by the Rosenberg family was like a dirty trick stressing that if some 2000 works were still in the care of French museums it was because their legitimate owners had not approached them yet.
However, French authorities took quite a long time to determine the ownership of these works and a special report drawn up by a committee set up to this effect has recommended them to speed up procedures.
Françoise Cachin, the Director of French museums who was present in Washington, expressed her opinion regarding the "Nympheas" painting saying that she was not taking the Rosenberg "bombshell" too seriously.
"The Rosenberg family should have come forward earlier and Paul Rosenberg himself did not try to recover this painting which was listed among the works seized from the Nazis as far back as 1951. There is may be an explanation, that is to say that Rosenberg had himself sold the Monet," Madame Cachin said.
The heirs of Paul Rosenberg were quite infuriated regarding such assertion and asked how a Jew who had fled his country to seek refuge in the U.S could have sold a painting to one of the top dignitaries of the Nazi regime.
Their counsels added that contrary to the statement made by Madame Cachin, Paul Rosenberg had effectively asked for the return of the painting after the war had ended but until his death in 1959 he had received no answer from French authorities. The counsels stressed that his requests appeared in several official documents, notably in the Art Loss Registry listing all German pillages during the war, in an OSS report made up in 1945 which criticized the French for their procrastination and in a list of stolen works of art which was published by the French administration in 1947.
All the more, Paul Rosenberg had drawn up a minute inventory of his works each of these being accompanied by a black and white photograph. A U.S lawyer acting for the family said that if it known the whereabouts of the painting it would have asked for its restitution much earlier. Still France waited until 1995 to publish a complete and detailed list of works under the care of French museums. Adrian Darmon
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