Painting stolen by Nazis returned to Montrealer’s estate

From The Globe and Mail: Painting stolen by Nazis returned to Montrealer’s estate
An 18th-century Dutch painting that once belonged to the prominent German-Canadian art dealer Max Stern has been returned to the dealer’s estate after being in the possession of a casino in southern Germany for many decades.

The Masters of the Goldsmith Guild in Amsterdam in 1701 by portrait painter Juriaen Pool II (1664-1750) is one of an estimated 400 art works Stern was forced to de-accession from his collection by the Nazis before the Second World War.

Stern, who died in 1987, eventually settled in Montreal in 1941; in 1947 he became the owner of the prestigious Dominion Gallery. His estate and its three university beneficiaries (Montreal’s Concordia and McGill Universities and Jerusalem’s Hebrew University) have been working to recover Nazi-looted work for the estate since 2004.

A restitution ceremony for the Pool – a large oil of some of Amsterdam’s most prominent citizens – was held Tuesday at the Amsterdam Museum.

It’s the ninth Nazi-plundered art work to be recovered on behalf of the estate.