Argentinian police are searching for a Nazi-looted painting after it was apparently spotted in an advert for a seaside property.
The painting, Portrait of a Lady by 18th-century Italian artist Giuseppe Ghislandi, was part of the collection of the Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, who fled the Netherlands when it was invaded by Nazi Germany.
His gallery containing more than 1,100 works of art was looted by the Nazis. This portrait was last traced to Switzerland in 1946, where it was under the possession of a high-ranking Nazi called Friedrich Kadgien, who had fled Germany after the war.
The Dutch cultural heritage agency Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (RCE) lists the painting as missing and it is included on the Lost Art Database. Goudstikker’s heirs—who won restitution of 202 other works from the Dutch government in 2006—have been looking for it for eight decades.
Research by the pensioner Paul Post and journalists from the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad (AD) apparently revealed the work on the living room wall at the Kadgien family home in Argentina. In a strange twist, while the AD correspondent Peter Schouten was visiting the property to invite Kadgien’s daughters to give an interview, he discovered it was for sale—and when a colleague then viewed the listing on the estate agent Robles Casas & Campos’s website, they spotted the painting on the wall in a photo.
Argentinian police raided the house in Mar del Plata on Tuesday (26 August). But according to Argentinian media, Portrait of a Lady had disappeared. Schouten reported that a tapestry was found hanging in its place.
There was no sign either of a second missing painting from the Goudstikker collection that Kadgien may have had in his possession—a floral still life by 17th century Dutch painter Abraham Mignon. This work was spotted by a Dutch researcher in a separate Facebook photo posted by one of the Kadgien sisters.
What might happen next?
“We hope that the Kadgien family will soon tell the Argentinian police or the Goudstikker heirs where Portrait of a Lady is at the moment, so there can be talks about the claim the Goudstikker family had on it,” AD journalist Cyril Rosman tells The Art Newspaper. “We have evidence that the painting was on the wall of the Kadgien family house very recently.”
Two experts from the RCE, Annelies Kool and Perry Schrier, said there was no reason to think the portrait was a copy. In a statement published on Wednesday, they said: “Although we have not physically examined the painting and cannot verify the back of the canvas (any marks or labels on the reverse could help confirm its provenance), it is reasonably likely that this is indeed the 18th-century portrait of Countess Colleoni by Ghislandi (1655–1743). The dimensions appear to match those listed on the original declaration form.”
Marei von Saher, 81, the daughter-in-law of Goudstikker, told AD they have never given up: “My family’s goal is to recover every artwork stolen from the Goudstikker collection to restore Jacques’ legacy.”
But Gert-Jan van den Bergh, an expert in restitution at Bergh Stoop & Sanders in Amsterdam, said any restitution claim would not be easy. “Let’s assume this indeed is the painting by the Italian master: in order for the Von Saher family to retrieve the work, they still have an uphill battle,” he tells The Art Newspaper. “This is not a painting in a public collection, [aided by] the so-called Washington principles. It is in a private collection.”