Art Institute of Chicago restitutes Metzinger painting sold in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam

The Art Institute of Chicago has agreed to restitute Jean Metzinger’s 1913 painting “Woman With a Fan” to the heirs of Jewish collector Emanuel Lewenstein, concluding it was likely a forced sale resulting from Nazi persecution in the occupied Netherlands. The work was auctioned in Amsterdam in October 1940, after Lewenstein’s widow had died and his children had emigrated, and the museum acquired it in 1959 from a New York gallery. Provenance researchers, led by Jacques Schuhmacher, used infrared photography to read faint pencil marks on the back of the painting that revealed the name of dealer Paul Citroen, a key link to the Lewenstein family. US official Stuart Eizenstat, who helped initiate the 1998 Washington Principles on Nazi-looted art, praised the museum’s cooperation as a model; the family is still seeking around 100 missing works, according to Mondex Corporation founder James Palmer.

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