Klimt, Chagall, and others: Why France has decided to give up some of its priceless collection of art

The French government last year adopted a provision for the restitution of confiscated and stolen assets to people in their countries of origin.

France will return the painting of Gustav Klimt. (Reuters)

France’s National Assembly last week unanimously adopted a Bill approving the return of 15 works of art sold under duress or looted by the Nazis, to their rightful Jewish owners.

The French government last year adopted a provision for the restitution of confiscated and stolen assets to people in their countries of origin.

Approved for restitution

The artworks that will be restored are currently in five different locations in France, including the Louvre and Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

On the list are Marc Chagall’s Le Père, which is in the collection of the Centre Pompidou, and Austrian master Gustav Klimt’s oil painting Roses Under the Trees, which is at the Musée d’Orsay. The Klimt will be returned to the family of its original owner Eleonore Stiasny, a niece of the Jewish Austrian collector Viktor Zuckerkandl.

Twelve out of 15 artworks included in the Bill are part of the Armand Dorville Collection. The French-Jewish lawyer and collector had fled Paris during World War II after the city fell to Nazi occupation.

Dorville’s collection of art and literature was auctioned after his death in 1942. The collector’s descendants have been in a legal battle with the French government for the restitution of 21 works of art.

According to a report published by the Working Party on the Spoliation of Jews in France, set up by the French government in 1997, approximately 1 lakh artworks were looted in France during the war.

Government has been keen

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The restitution is part of the French culture ministry’s directed efforts to identify works seized from Jews by the Nazis that are in its institutions.

French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot has described the bill as historic. She has been quoted as saying: “It’s the first time since the post-war period that the government is showing a legal commitment towards the restitution of pieces from public collections.”

France’s Senate is expected to endorse the Bill on February 15.

Other works returned

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Last year, the Ministry of Culture announced that four works by artists Georges Michel, Paul Delaroche, Auguste Hesse, and Jules-Jacques Veyrassat would be returned to their rightful owners.

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Earlier, in 2013, France returned six paintings — including works by Alessandro Longhi, Sebastiano Ricci and Gaspare Diziani — that were part of the Nazis’ Second World War loot, to their rightful owner, a grandson of Richard Neumann, an Austrian Jew who had fled to France to escape the Nazis.

In November 2021, President Emmanuel Macron hosted his counterpart from the former French colony of Benin, President Patrice Talon, to formalise an agreement for the return of 26 artworks taken from the Royal Palaces of Abomey in 1892.

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