A watercolour on show in the Fondation Beyeler\u2019s recent exhibition devoted to Paul Cezanne once belonged to a Jewish businessman who lost it due to Nazi persecution, according to a researcher working for the heir of Gustav Schweitzer, a Jewish businessman who fled Berlin in 1935.<\/p>\n
The provenance researcher, Willi Korte, unearthed documents in the Basel public archives chronicling Schweitzer\u2019s loan of the 1888 watercolour depicting the Montagne Sainte Victoire to the city\u2019s Kunsthalle for a 1936 exhibition. Correspondence between the curator in Basel and Schweitzer or his secretary continued until 1939, when she wrote from Paris to confirm the watercolour\u2019s safe return. How Schweitzer lost ownership of the work is not known, Korte says.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut this means it was either sold under duress after Schweitzer had fled Germany, or it was looted in Nazi-occupied territory,\u201d he says. Korte urged the Fondation Beyeler to keep hold of the watercolour. \u201cThe Fondation Beyeler should live up to its historical obligation to actively contribute to a fair and just solution,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The watercolour was one of 79 works on show in the Basel exhibition Cezanne<\/a>, which ended Monday (25 May). Its lender is listed in the catalogue only as an unnamed private collector; according to the Cezanne catalogue raisonn\u00e9, the current owner is US-based. A spokesperson for the Fondation Beyeler said in a statement that it will return the work to the lender.<\/p>\n \u201cThe lender of the watercolour will be informed of the suspicion that has been raised,\u201d the spokesperson stated. \u201cAs a matter of principle, a Swiss museum has no authority to retain artworks without an appropriate legal basis.\u201d<\/p>\n Responding to Korte\u2019s accusations that the museum should have been more diligent in examining the provenance of works loaned to its exhibition, the foundation\u2019s spokesperson said that \u201cit is not possible to research the provenance histories of works loaned to temporary exhibitions with the same depth as works in the museum\u2019s own collection\u201d. The spokesperson added that the work was not listed on lostart.de, a German database of Nazi-era losses.<\/p>\n Research into Schweitzer\u2019s collection and biography has begun only since his grandson became aware of the lost art in 2024, thanks to the publication of a report on the controversial B\u00fchrle Collection<\/a> on loan to Zurich\u2019s Kunsthaus. Led by the president of the German Historical Museum, Raphael Gross, the research team investigated<\/a> Vincent van Gogh\u2019s Head of a Peasant Woman (1885), which was also owned by Schweitzer. The report recommended further research into the painting\u2019s history, saying a loss due to persecution could not be ruled out.<\/p>\n The correspondence Korte discovered in the Basel archive reveals that Schweitzer asked the Kunsthalle curator to keep the Cezanne watercolour safe after the 1936 exhibition there and enquired whether he might be able to find a buyer for it. The curator had the work restored at Schweitzer\u2019s expense. But after no sale came about, he sent it back to Schweitzer\u2019s secretary in 1939.<\/p>\n By that time, Schweitzer had left Paris for Asia on a business trip from which he never returned\u2014he died of a heart attack in Manila in 1939. His secretary was deported from Paris in 1942 and was killed a week later at Auschwitz. Schweitzer\u2019s wife fled to the US in 1938 and was joined by their son after the war; the sole heir, the couple\u2019s grandson, lives in the US.<\/p>\n Georg Kreis, a historian who has been a member of a number of expert panels investigating Switzerland\u2019s role in the Nazi era, suggested that the Fondation Beyeler should serve as a mediator between Schweitzer\u2019s grandson and the current holder of the watercolour.<\/p>\n \u201cWith a heavy cloud of suspicion hanging over it, this work will become unsaleable,\u201d Kreis says. \u201cA solution by mutual agreement must lead to the acknowledgement that the original owner lost it due to Nazi persecution. And rather than empty words, the descendants of the original owner should receive compensation, in line with common practice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A watercolour on show in the Fondation Beyeler\u2019s recent exhibition devoted to Paul Cezanne once belonged to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8],"tags":[38390,77,32904,38388,38389,32905],"class_list":["post-72341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basel","tag-art-law","tag-basel","tag-fondation-beyeler","tag-museums-heritage","tag-nazi-loot","tag-paul-cezanne"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116642249703803249","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}