A 1901
painting by Max Liebermann is to be sold at auction in London next month by the
heirs of the original owners. It was held by Hildebrandt Gurlitt, Hitler's art
dealer, and was only recovered last year.
"Two
Riders on a Beach", was painted in 1901 and bought by German property
developer David Friedmann. He was arrested in November 1938, shortly after the
Kristallnacht attacks against Jews in Germany and Austria.
David
Toren, Friedmann's great nephew, remembers seeing the painting the day his
great uncle signed over his estate to the Nazis at a villa in what has become
present-day Poland.
"I was
instructed to wait outside the room in which the paperwork was being
signed," David Toren was quoted by Sotheby's as saying. "It was in
there, in the conservatory, that I sat opposite the beautiful painting of the
two horse riders on the beach."
In 1942 the
painting was sold by the Nazi regime and eventually bought by Hildebrandt
Gurlitt, an art dealer. He had been instructed by Adolf Hitler to take great
works from museums and Jewish collectors.
Monuments
men
Three years
later, the group formed by Allied armies to protect cultural treasures,
"the Monuments Men," found the painting. But it was returned to
Gurlitt in 1950, as there was no documentation on its rightful owner. The work
of the Monuments Men was turned into a 2014 film directed, produced and written
by George Clooney.
In 2012 in
a home owned by Gurlitt's son Cornelius, more than 1,500 works including some
by Picasso, Monet and Chagall were discovered.
"Two
Riders on a Beach" was one of the first of the recovered paintings to be
released back to the heirs of their rightful owners. Toren said he and other
heirs had decided to sell the painting so it could "pass into a new phase
of its story."
"I am
90 years old now and blind so, while the return of the paintings after so many
years is of huge personal significance, I can no longer appreciate the painting
as I did all those years ago," said Toren, who escaped Germany, grew up in
Sweden and now lives in New York.
Sotheby's
estimated on Friday that the Liebermann painting could sell for up to $850,000
(771,000 euros) when it is auctioned in London on June 24.
jm/rc (AP, AFP)
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