Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum says it will return a Henri Matisse painting to the heirs of a Jewish textile manufacturer who sold it under duress in the Netherlands before being deported to a Nazi camp, where he died in 1945.
the painting, Odalisque (1920-21), has been in the museum’s collection since July 1941, when it was sold by Albert Stern, once owner of one of Germany’s largest women’s clothing manufacturers and patron of the arts.
The Dutch Committee for Restitutions said in its assessment of the claim of the heirs that the sale “was related to the measures taken by the occupying forces against the Jews of the population and arose out of necessity.”
Stern’s wife, Marie Stern, who had studied art, was the driving force behind the couple’s collection, which included works by Edvard Munch, Lovis Corinth and Vincent van Gogh. They lived in a beautiful house in the Berlin lakeside suburb of Nikolassee, where they entertained artists, writers, musicians and collectors. Violinist Yehudi Menuhin is known to have played there as a child.
The family fled to Amsterdam in 1937. In 1939, the Nazis had confiscated Stern’s business and the family home. After the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, the family suffered further persecution and by August 1941 they were living in a boarding house and selling their furniture.
At the time of the Matisse sale, Stern was desperately trying to escape the Netherlands and had tried in vain to obtain visas to numerous countries, including the United States, Haiti and Cuba, according to a statement from the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, which represents the heirs from Stern.
Stern and his two sons died in the Holocaust. His wife, Marie Stern, survived him, as did two of his grandchildren.
“The return of the Matisses is a moving and overwhelming moment for all of us,” the heirs said in a statement. “Our grandparents loved art, music and theater, it was the center of their lives. In the few years we had our grandmother after the war, she passed that love on to us, and it has enriched our lives ever since. The decision gave symbolic justice to our grandfather.”
Stedelijk director Rein Wolfs said the museum has had questions about the provenance of the painting since 2013. It represents, he said, “a very sad story and is connected to the unspeakable suffering inflicted on this family.”
Touria Meliani, the mayor of culture of the municipality of Amsterdam, which owns the Stedelijk, described the suffering of Jewish citizens in the Second World War as “unprecedented and irreversible”.
“To the extent that anything can be redressed from the great injustice that has been done to them, we as a society have a moral obligation to act accordingly,” Meliani added. “The return of works of art, such as Odalisque painting, it can mean a lot to the victims”.
