Before Thieves Stole A Now-Missing Renoir Painting, Family Says Nazis Had Already Done So—And It Belongs to Them.
After thieves stole four Pierre-Auguste Renoir works from a museum in southern France on Tuesday—abandoning two in the museum garden while two remain missing—new reporting said one missing painting, Jeune femme au puits (1886), is also the subject of a Holocaust-era restitution claim. Descendants of Paris art dealer Jadwiga (Hedwig) Zak, who founded Galerie Zak in 1928 and died in Auschwitz in 1944 after her gallery and home were seized in 1941, had filed a formal restitution request, according to Le Monde. The Canada-based Mondex Corporation said it petitioned the French government about a year ago for the painting’s return and was awaiting a decision when the theft occurred; founder James Palmer said Mondex presented “compelling evidence” and is cooperating with authorities to recover and ultimately restitute the work. Musée d’Orsay curator Paul Perrin told Le Monde the painting was seized during World War II by the German organization Otto, then ended up in Bavaria, and noted the Orsay had lent the stolen works on long-term basis to the Renoir Museum.
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This story was covered in Museum Price Tags, Stolen Legacies, DNA Secrets