A lawsuit claims that the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a Greek foundation should not have acquired a Vincent van Gogh oil painting stolen by the Nazis, and should return the work to the relatives of its rightful owners.
The heirs to a German-Jewish family say they were forced to abandon van Gogh’s 1889 painting “Olive Picking” in Munich when they fled Nazi rule and are suing The Met and the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation for allegedly purchasing the work without fully researching its provenance.
“In the decades since the end of World War II, this Nazi-looted painting has been repeatedly and secretly trafficked, purchased and sold in and through New York,” reads the complaint, filed in Manhattan federal court by Judith Anne Silver, administrator of the Estate of Hedwig E. Stern. The heirs are seeking the restitution of the painting or its equivalence in value as well as damages over $75,000.
In a statement to Hyperallergic, a spokesperson for The Met said the institution believes the work entered its collection and was sold “legally and well within all guidelines and policies,” but welcomed any new information about the piece.
The painting’s controversial provenance remains in dispute.
The Dutch Post-Impressionist artist created the work, which depicts three women using a ladder to pluck olives from a grove, a year before he died. Fritz and Hedwig Stern purchased the painting in 1935, but the Nazi government declared it “German cultural property” and prevented them from bringing it with them when they fled with their six children to California the following year, the suit said.
Instead, the Nazis appointed a “trustee” to sell the painting in 1938, put the funds in a blocked account, and later confiscated the money, the suit claimed. The painting made its way to Tübingen, then part of the French Zone, and eventually New York by way of dealer Justin Thannhauser, who had played a role in the sale of the work in Berlin and sought the approval of the French government to have it sent to him. (Although Thannhauser, who was Jewish, was also forced to flee Germany, he is “now widely known to have trafficked in art that was looted from or sold under duress by Jewish families,” the suit states.)
Around 1948, Thannhauser sold the work to the wealthy businessman Vincent Astor, allegedly without disclosing its connection to the Sterns.
By 1955, Astor’s wife, the philanthropist Brooke Astor, consigned the painting to the Knoedler Gallery, which sold it to the Met the following year for $125,000. Museum curator Theodore Rousseau, Jr. approved the purchase but failed to realize that the Nazis had taken the painting despite serving as an officer on the Art Looting Investigation Unit in the Office of Strategic Services during the war, the suit claims.
“Rousseau and the Met knew or should have known that the painting had probably been looted by Nazis,” the suit said.
In 1972, the museum sold the work via Marlborough Gallery to the Greek shipping magnate Basil Goulandris and his wife Elise. It is currently on display in an Athens museum run by the Greek couple’s foundation, which does not mention the Stern family’s role in its ownership. The lawsuit further accuses the Gouladris family and its entities of deliberately concealing the painting’s provenance via a series of transfers.
Hyperallergic has contacted the Goulandris Foundation for comment.
The lawsuit questions the Met’s reasons for deaccessioning the work, alleging that “it was concerned that another institution would report the painting as looted.”
As for The Met, museum officials say that the painting met the museum’s “strict criteria for deaccessioning” since it was determined to be of lesser importance than other van Gogh works in its collection. They added that the museum published the artwork’s known ownership history in a 1967 catalogue of French paintings in the collection.
“At no time during The Met’s ownership of the painting was there any record that it had once belonged to the Stern family — indeed, that information did not become available until several decades after the painting left the Museum’s collection,” the Met spokesperson said in a statement.
The artwork’s provenance and The Met’s intentions will soon be debated in Manhattan federal court, a forum where pilfered artworks and antiquities have frequently been re-examined and expatriated (the Stern heirs pursued litigation to return the painting in California in 2022, but the suit was dismissed for jurisdiction reasons).
The Met established a new position last year responsible for researching the provenance of 1.5 million works in its collection. Dozens of works of art and artifacts have been seized by the Manhattan district attorney’s office since 2017 over concerns about their acquisition. The museum now has a team of 11 analysts.
“The Metropolitan Museum of Art takes seriously its longstanding commitment to address Nazi-era claims and has a long and well documented history of leading research initiatives and seeking resolution for any object that has been identified as illegally appropriated without subsequent restitution,” a Met spokeswoman said.
