A while ago, a post on the Guardian website, written by Kim Willsher caught my eye. The University of Oklahoma and an 81-year-old French Nazi-survivor battled over a painting which rightfully belonged to her? Earlier this week, the 81-year-old woman announced she gave up her battle. A university and bunch of lawyers had finally bullied her into submission.
Pisarro’s La Bergère Rentrant des Moutons was bought Raoul Meyer, who left this and other works of art the family owned in a Parisian vault when the Nazis invaded France. He joined the French resistance. After the war, he and his wife Yvonne adopted a Jewish girl Léone-Noëlle. An orphan, her complete family had perished in Nazi concentration camps.
PIssarro’s Bergére, once owned by Raoul Meyer, then looted by Nazis.
Like so many others whose art collections and homes were looted by the Nazis, Mr. Meyer tried to find and recover his possessions. As happened so often in such cases – and clearly continuous to happen right up till this day and age: it took him years to locate stolen works which belonged to him, but museums, art-dealers, art collectors simply stone-walled or denied everything. In the case of his Pisarro, he even tried to buy it back in 1953 – unsuccessfully.
After the failed attempt to buy back what was his, the painting disappeared till 1990. It was discovered in an American museum. It had been donated to the University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr Museum of Art. Apparently, no art dealer, no collector, no museum, nor university had bothered to scrupulously and painstakingly trace ownership. For what had happened in 1953, had been in the newspapers.
Madame Meyer started legal proceedings. In 2016, she was called in the middle of the night and pressured into agreeing to share the painting with the University of Oklahoma on the basis of a three-year rotation between a French and the American museum.
Mind, at the time of that midnight call, Madame Meyer was already in her late seventies. I don’t know about your grans, but my gran who survived different WWII nightmares and was afraid of bullies, would have signed away the world. So after being exhibited in the US, the painting was dispatched to be exhibited at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
A few weeks ago, a Paris court ruled that the ‘rotation-contract’ overruled the 1945 French law which requires the restitution of Nazi looted artworks to their rightful owners. This ensured Madame Meyer faced hefty fines if the Pisarro was not returned to the University of Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the intentions of the American museum remained unclear: would it stick to a costly rotation-scheme?
Earlier this week, Madame Meyer caved in: “This work of art, which belonged to my adoptive parents, Yvonne and Raoul Meyer, was stolen from them by the Nazis during the occupation of France in 1941. For almost 10 years, I have battled in order to obtain the recognition of the principle that the restitution of a pillaged work of art should occur independently of any other consideration related to its provenance, its history or its successive ‘owners’, but after all these years, I have to admit it has proven impossible to convince the different parties to whose attention I have brought this matter. I was heard but not listened to.”
The University of Oklahoma stated it did not intend to retain ‘the title to the painting in the long term’. In other words: it does not intend to remain the work’s owner. It claimed it was “committed to identifying and transferring ownership to a French public institution, or the US Art in Embassies programme”.
The latter option would ensure the looted Pisarro painting will become part of a “mission of cross-cultural exchange, [in which the programme’s] curators work with ambassadors to create temporary exhibitions for the representational spaces of U.S. embassy residences. Exhibitions coincide with an ambassadors’ term and, as with AIE collections, AIE exhibitions are intended to serve as tools of cultural diplomacy.”
Let’s hope the smug university and its lawyers will ‘transfer ownership’ – undoubtedly not for free – to a French museum; preferably the Musée d’Orsay.
For let’s face it: how on earth does a “vital cross-cultural dialogue and [fostered] mutual understanding through the visual arts and dynamic artist exchanges” work in the case of proven Nazi-looted art?
How on earth does cultural diplomacy work, when the collection used to promote it, includes works which are known to have been looted by Nazis or other criminals?
How does all this fostering mutual understanding work, when people the world over can point and say: hey, mister (or missus) Ambassador, that work of art rightfully belongs to the heirs of folks who were sent to Nazi concentration camps – how come it’s gracing your wall?
Pisarro’s painting can be admired in the Musée d’Orsay this summer. Madame Meyer would have very much preferred for it to remain at this museum. But what if it ends up gracing an embassy’s wall ’cause a temporary occupant takes a fancy to it? Who will then ensure you or I ever get a chance to admire it?
The university makes nice, syrupy promises but to be quite frank: these make me want to p*ke.
Oh and in case you think this Pisarro is unique? There are more American museums which knowingly own and exhibit (Nazi-)looted works of art, part of their collections, while refusing to hand these back to the rightful owners.
Image: Pisarro, La Bergère Rentrant des Moutons, , USA
Guardian, Kim Willsher: Frenchwoman gives up legal fight for return of Nazi-looted Pissarro – 1st of June 2021
France, Paris, Musée d’Orsay website (French museums have reopened!)
Katevents 