The National Gallery of Victoria has quietly returned a 17th-century painting to the descendants of a Jewish family who lost it during the Nazi era, without public announcement or explanation.
The painting, Lady with a Fan by Gerard ter Borch, was removed from the NGV’s website in early September. The only public trace of its return appeared weeks later, in an update to the Lost Art Database in Germany.
The museum has declined to answer key questions about the decision, prompting the New York-based researcher who uncovered the story, Jason Schulman, to challenge the NGV’s handling of the case.
“Any time a painting is restituted to a family who had to part with it because of the Nazi regime, I think it’s a good thing,” Schulman told Guardian Australia. “But I think there are questions about how and why the NGV did what it did that should be made public.”
The museum has not disclosed what new evidence the family claiming ownership of the painting presented, or why this case was handled privately, when a previous restitution in 2014 was highly publicised by the museum.
Schulman, a 2025 Fulbright Scholar to Australia who has spent years studying potentially Nazi-looted art, said he had been following the fate of the ter Borch work ever since descendants of German-Swiss businessman Max Emden first laid claim to the painting in the early 2000s.
“It had been in the news for 20 years,” he said. “I’d spent a lot of time researching it. And suddenly, it was gone.”
What Schulman uncovered was a complex, decades-long dispute between two branches of the same family, and a museum that, despite its past commitments to transparency, chose this time to stay silent.
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The NGV acquired Lady with a Fan in 1945 for 4,000 pounds. In the early 2000s, the Emden family approached the museum, claiming the work had once belonged to their grandfather Max. Their claim was based on family memory and a listing on the NGV’s provenance website that included the name “Martin Bromberg”, a relative of Emden’s. In 2004, the family contacted the museum to correct a typo on the site, “Grunden” instead of “Emden.” The NGV made the change, Schulman said.
But in 2006, the museum rejected the Emden claim of ownership, citing a lack of concrete evidence.
“They couldn’t prove the painting was stolen,” Schulman said. “There were no photographs, no documentation.”
In 2022, the Emdens hired Olaf Ossmann, a Swiss lawyer known for his role in a 2014 NGV restitution case involving a disputed Van Gogh. Around the same time, the Bromberg family, cousins of the Emdens, also laid claim to the painting.
Earlier this year Ossmann and the Emdens withdrew their claim with the NGV. Ossmann told the Guardian in an email the family had accepted evidence that Max Emden had just hidden the property of Henry and Hertha Bromberg, to get the painting out of Germany.
Schulman said as a Swiss citizen, Emden would have been able to export paintings out of Germany, while his German Jewish cousin would have faced export restrictions and fees.
The Brombergs have successfully recovered other works in recent years, including a work attributed to Joos van Cleve from France in 2016 and a Lucas Cranach from Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania in 2024.
In the case of the latter, while both sides agreed the painting was sold to help Henry and Hertha escape Nazi persecution, they disagreed on timing; the Bromberg heirs believe it happened before the couple fled Germany, while the museum’s lawyer suggests it was after. Taking the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi Confiscated Art as their guide, both parties agreed to sell the work and share in the proceeds.
Both cases were widely publicised by the museums involved and in the case of the Van Cleve, Henry Bromberg’s grandchildren, Christopher Bromberg and Henrietta Schubert, were photographed by the New York Times next to the recovered painting.
But in the case of the ter Borch in Australia, both the family and the NGV are keeping information to a minimum.
The Brombergs issued the following statement to the Guardian through their Berlin-based legal representative Imke Gielen.
“We are pleased that another artwork from our grandparents’ collection was identified,” the statement said.
“We are satisfied that the National Gallery of Victoria carefully checked the provenance of the painting Lady with a Fan by Gerard ter Borch and the circumstances under which Henry and Herta Bromberg had to part with it during the Nazi period, which led to the painting’s return.”
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The NGV confirmed the painting’s return in a brief written statement.
“After thoroughly assessing the painting’s background and origins, the NGV determined that the work had been owned by Dr Henry Bromberg and was subject to a forced sale in the late 1930s, and that the heirs of Dr Bromberg were the rightful owners of the painting,” the statement said.
“The painting was subsequently deaccessioned from the NGV Collection in 2025 and returned to the Bromberg family.”
Despite the return, Schulman said the NGV’s handling of the case raises broader concerns, which the Guardian raised with the NGV but did not receive a response.
By refusing to disclose what new evidence the Brombergs presented to prove ownership, it was impossible to say whether, under the guidelines of the Washington Agreement, the NGV should have entered into a sale and split agreement similar to the Allentown case involving the Cranach painting, instead of handing the artwork over to the family outright, Schulman said.
“Given how similar the paths of the Cranach and the ter Borch were, it’s surprising the NGV didn’t feel the same ambiguity,” he said.
In 2012 Christie’s London received a record price for a ter Borch work, The Glass of Lemonade, selling for £1,273,250 at auction.
The NGV’s decision to handle the deacquisition privately was equally puzzling, Schulman said, given in 2014 it went public on the return to a Jewish family of a work attributed to Van Gogh.
“The decision to do this secretly is surprising,” Schulman said.
“There have definitely been situations when a museum has secretly returned a painting, but usually this is at the request of the family.
“I think given the fact that the Brombergs were willing to be in the news in the case of the Cranach just last year suggests that the decision to do this quietly came from the museum.”
The NGV also declined to say whether it was reviewing other works in its collection with potentially problematic second world war-era provenance.