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Lucas Cranach the Elder was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is known for his portraits, both of German princes and those of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, whose cause he embraced with enthusiasm. He was a close friend of Martin Luther. Cranach also painted religious subjects, first in the Catholic tradition, and later trying to find new ways of conveying Lutheran religious concerns in art. He continued throughout his career to paint nude subjects drawn from mythology and religion.
Gerard ter Borch, also known as Gerard Terburg, was a Dutch genre painter who lived in the Dutch Golden Age. He influenced fellow Dutch painters Gabriel Metsu, Gerrit Dou, Eglon van der Neer and Johannes Vermeer. According to Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Ter Borch "established a new framework for subject matter, taking people into the sanctum of the home", showing the figures' uncertainties and expertly hinting at their inner lives. His influence as a painter, however, was later surpassed by Vermeer.
The Österreichische Galerie Belvedere is a museum housed in the Belvedere palace, in Vienna, Austria.
Otto Müller was a German painter and printmaker of the Die Brücke expressionist movement.
The Dorotheum is one of the world's oldest auction houses and is the largest auction house of art items in Continental Europe. Established by Emperor Joseph I in 1707, it has its headquarters in Vienna on the Dorotheergasse and branches in other European countries. Besides auctions, the retail sector also plays a major role in Dorotheum's business. In the Dorotheum, works of art, antiques, furniture, and jewellery from various centuries are put up for auction. The building is constructed in the neo-classical style. It is an attraction for Viennese natives and numerous tourists alike.
The Bavarian State Painting Collections, based in Munich, Germany, oversees artwork held by the Free State of Bavaria. It was established in 1799 as Centralgemäldegaleriedirektion. Artwork includes paintings, sculptures, photographs, video art and installation art. Pieces are on display in numerous galleries and museums throughout Bavaria.
M. Knoedler & Co. was an art dealership in New York City founded in 1846. When it closed in 2011, amid lawsuits for fraud, it was one of the oldest commercial art galleries in the US, having been in operation for 165 years.
Theodor Fischer (1878–1957) was a Swiss art dealer and auctioneer in Lucerne who after the First World War built a highly successful firm of auctioneers that dominated the Swiss art market. In 1939 he was the auctioneer at the infamous Grand Hotel auction of "degenerate art" removed from German museums by the Nazis. During the Second World War he played a key part in the trading of art looted by the Germans from occupied countries.
Galerie St. Etienne is an Expressionism art gallery operating in the United States, founded in Vienna in 1923 by Otto Kallir as the Neue Galerie. Forced to leave Austria after the 1938 Nazi invasion, Kallir established his gallery in Paris as the Galerie St. Etienne, named after the Neue Galerie's location near Vienna's Cathedral of St. Stephen. In 1939, Kallir and his family left France for the United States, where he reestablished the Galerie St. Etienne on 46 West 57th Street in New York City. The gallery still exists, run by Otto Kallir's granddaughter Jane and Hildegard Bachert on 24 West 57th Street. It maintains a reputation as a principal harbinger of Austrian and German Expressionism to the US.
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The Vugesta for “Vermögens-Umzugsgut von der Gestapo" was a Nazi looting organization in Vienna that from 1940 to 1945 seized the possessions of 5,000-6,000 Viennese Jews. It was a key player in the aryanization of Jewish property, redistributing private property stolen from Jewish Austrians to non-Jewish or Aryan Austrians during the Nazi reign in Austria.
Dead City III is an oil on wood expressionist painting by Egon Schiele from 1911. It was owned by the Viennese cabaret artist Fritz Grünbaum before he was murdered by Nazis and has been the object of high-profile disputes and court battles. Suspected by New York's District Attorney of having been looted by the Nazis, Dead City III was temporarily confiscated from the Austrian art collector Rudolf Leopold after he loaned it to a New York museum in 1998. The ownership history of the painting has been the object of high-profile court cases in which two very different versions of the painting's journey from the Jewish Holocaust victim to the Austrian art collector collide.
Leo Bendel was a tobacco dealer and art collector.
Walter Westfeld was a German Jewish art collector and art dealer whose collection was plundered by Nazis. Westfield was murdered in the Holocaust.
Lempertz is an art auction house in Cologne, Germany.
Karl Buchholz was one of Hitler's Nazi art dealers specialized in selling looted "Degenerate Art".
Heinrich Rieger was an Austrian dentist whose art collection was one of the most important in Austrian modern art. Rieger and his wife were murdered in the Holocaust.
Oscar Reichel was an Austrian physician and art collector. His work was confiscated by the Nazis during World War II, leading to claims from his descendants to restore it to them.
Friedrich Maximilian Welz was an Austrian art dealer and Nazi party member investigated for art looting.
References
- ↑ "Archives Directory for the History of Collecting". research.frick.org. Retrieved 2021-12-24.
- ↑ "ELKAN SILBERMAN, ART DEALER HERE; Connoisseur Who Had Helped Form Museum Collections Dies--Gallery Partner". The New York Times. 1952-05-16. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 2021-04-06.
- ↑ "Archives Directory for the History of Collecting". research.frick.org. Retrieved 2021-04-06.
- ↑ "Holocaust_Era_Assets_Conference_Proceedings_2009" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-05-02.
- ↑ "41.935". Association of Art Museum Directors. Archived from the original on 2020-09-28. Retrieved 2021-04-06.
In June 2011, the Museum of Fine Arts reached a financial settlement with the heirs and the estate of Walter Westfeld for Eglon van der Neer's Portrait of a Man and Woman in an Interior, allowing the painting to remain at the museum. Walter Westfeld (b. 1889 – d. after 1942) operated an art gallery in Wuppertal, Germany, during the Nazi period. A 1935 decree from the Reichs Chamber of Fine Arts forbade him from working as a dealer because he was Jewish, and he was ordered to close the gallery in May of 1936. That very month, an exhibition of works of art owned by Westfeld was held at the Galerie Kleucker in the nearby city of Düsseldorf, including a "Company Scene" by Eglon van der Neer. This was almost certainly the MFA painting. The paper trail ends there, and begins again five years later. The MFA purchased the painting from E. and A. Silberman Galleries, New York, in December, 1941. Silberman probably acquired the painting in the spring of that year, but it has not been ascertained from whom. It is not known for certain how the MFA's Portrait of a Man and Woman in an Interior left Westfeld's possession and made its way to the United States. Without further documentation, its exact provenance may never be known. However, it is difficult to imagine a scenario by which he sold the painting voluntarily in Nazi Germany, receiving proceeds over which he had free disposal. In November, 1938, Walter Westfeld was arrested for violating Germany's foreign exchange laws. He spent the remaining years of his life in captivity and on January 23, 1943, was sent to his death at Auschwitz.
- ↑ "Suspecting It Harbors a Nazi-Looted Painting, MFA Boston Preemptively Pays Settlement". www.lootedart.com. Archived from the original on 2016-08-11. Retrieved 2021-04-06.
The portrait of a wealthy Dutch couple in their living room was purchased from New York's E. and A. Silberman Galleries in 1941 for $7,500. At the time, the dealer said merely that the portrait was "brought to this country by a refugee some time ago, and I wish I were able to supply you with more information." In 1943, French dealer Robert Lebel provided a lead, telling the MFA that he had sold the portrait to Westfeld and that soon afterward the Nazis arrested the Jewish dealer and sold off his artworks.
- ↑ "Revealed: National Gallery's Cranach is war loot". www.lootedart.com. The Art Newspaper. Archived from the original on 2010-11-24. Retrieved 2021-04-06.
