German casino returns valuable painting

The Canadian Jewish News: German casino returns valuable painting
MONTREAL — A German casino has returned a Nazi-looted painting to the university heirs of the estate of the German-Jewish Montreal art dealer Max Stern.

Representatives of Concordia University, acting on behalf of the executors of the estate and its two other main beneficiaries, McGill University and Hebrew University of Jerusalem, were in the Netherlands Oct. 25 for the unveiling of the Dutch Old Master oil that has been restituted by the unidentified German company.

The return of The Masters of the Goldsmith Guild in Amsterdam in 1701 by Juriaen Pool II (1665-1745) took place at the Amsterdam Museum. The work is valued at close to $1 million.

The Pool painting is the ninth work that Stern was forced to sell by the Nazis to be returned to the university heirs. It’s the first recovered from a German owner.

Stern (1904-1987) was forced to dissolve his Düsseldorf art gallery during the Nazi period. In the early 1940s, he settled in Montreal, where, as owner of the Dominion Gallery, he became one of the country’s most important art dealers and collectors.

The location for the Oct. 25 ceremony was significant, as the Dutch museum just opened a children’s wing in a space that was once occupied by the orphanage in which Pool, a leading figure in what is known as the Dutch Golden Age, was raised.

Pool married Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), one of the most prominent female artists of the time. The couple became court painters to the Elector Palatine, Johann Wilhelm. Since 2005, Concordia has led an international search for some 250 paintings Stern had to liquidate under duress for prices well below their value, before fleeing Germany in 1937.

Clarence Epstein, who heads the restitution project, said it was learned that this large-scale depiction of some of Amsterdam’s most important citizens had been with the Galerie Stern in Düsseldorf as late as 1937, when it moved to the Galerie Heinemann in Wiesbaden.

After World War II, it was acquired by a casino in southern Germany, where it has been ever since.

The 6-1/2-by-5-foot painting shows five distinguished-looking gentleman sitting around a table on which some of their wares are being displayed.

In 2004, the auction house Sotheby’s contacted the Stern estate regarding the status of the painting. Six years of research ensued, resulting in the discovery of key archival records in the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD). The Holocaust Claims Processing Office (HCPO) of New York State’s department of financial services was instrumental in pressing the case for the painting’s restitution.

“We are extremely grateful to all the important stakeholders — the HCPO, the RKD and Sotheby’s — who were critical to the restitution of this work from a German corporate collection,” said Concordia president Frederick Lowy.