Seattle Art Museum Surrenders A Matisse
by Jane Harris
Featuring the works of artists
on PaintingsDirect.com. |
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During the second World War, Henri Matisse's "Odalesque" (1921) was forcibly taken from renown French art dealer Paul Rosenberg, a Jew who was the victim of several state-authorized thefts by the German army. In a complicated chain of events, the modern painting was recently discovered in the holdings of The Seattle Art Museum.
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"Border Skirmishes"
Tina Rohrer |
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"All I Find, All I Keep"
Christopher Chambers
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The museum acquired the work in 1991 as a gift from Seattle area collectors Prentice and Virginia Bloedel, who in turn had purchased it from the Knoedler Gallery in New York. In a strange twist of fate, it was the Bloedel's grandson who notified Rosenberg’s heirs about the painting’s rediscovery; he had seen the painting listed among other confiscated works in a book, "The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy To Steal the World's Greatest Works of Art" (1996).
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Despite a recent court decision which dismissed a claim by the museum against Knoedler Gallery on the grounds that it was the Bloedels (now deceased) who were defrauded, the museum's most recent press release states it will continue to pursue litigation. The Seattle Art Museum is demanding compensation for the work, which is estimated to be worth over $2 million dollars.
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"Possession"
Ann Leibowitz
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"Mine"
Cecily Barth Firestein
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The Seattle Art Museum isn't the only institution to reluctantly return a work to the Rosenberg family. This past April, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France gave up Fernand Leger's 1914 "Woman in Red and Green".
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Read our archived Art in the News |
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