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First work from Gurlitt hoard goes under the hammer

Sotheby’s to auction looted painting by Liebermann that was returned to heirs last week

Julia Michalska
22 May 2015
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The first painting from Cornelius Gurlitt’s controversial art cache is coming to auction. Max Liebermann’s Zwei Reiter am Strand nach Links (two riders on the beach to the left, 1901), which was returned to the heirs of its original owner David Friedmann on 13 May, is due to be included in Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern art evening sale on 24 June (est. £350,000-£550,000).

German officials discovered the picture, along with around 1,300 other works by artists such as Picasso, Pissarro, Matisse and Renoir, in Gurlitt’s Munich apartment in 2012. Many of the works are suspected Nazi-loot, as the collection was largely amassed by Gurlitt’s father, the Nazi-era art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt. Shortly before his death in May last year, Cornelius Gurlitt bequeathed the collection to the Kunstmuseum Bern. But works believed to have been stolen by the Nazis remain under the jurisdiction of the German government.

David Toren, Friedmann’s great nephew and the only heir to have seen the painting before it was seized by the Nazis, says: “I am 90 years old and blind, so while the return of the painting after so many years is of huge personal significance, I can no longer appreciate the painting as I did all those years ago in my great uncle’s home… I am one of a number of heirs and we have decided to sell.”

Friedmann, a wealthy industrialist and art collector from Breslau (now Wroclaw), bought the painting in 1901, the year it was painted. During the Second World War, the Nazis confiscated Friedmann’s property, including the painting by Liebermann. Friedmann died of natural causes in 1942 though much of his family was killed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Through the auctioneer Hermann Petschel, Nazi authorities sold the painting to Cornelius Müller Hofstede, the executive director of the Fine Art Museum in Breslau, in 1942. Hofstede then offered it to Hildebrandt Gurlitt.

The Monuments Men seized the painting after the war ended, but the team returned the work to Gurlitt in 1950 after failing to link it to its heirs. 

Sotheby's said in a statement that the work is in "excellent condition". While many works in Gurlitt's collection were found stashed haphazardly in crates, the Liebermann was hung on the wall, "evidently much admired by Gurlitt".

So far, the German government has only returned one other work: Femme assise dans un feauteuil (seated woman in a chair) by Henri Matisse. The heirs of Paul Rosenberg retrieved the work on 15 May.

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