Cezanne Heirs Reach Deal With Museum On Painting In Nazi Trove
Unlikely Trove: A Munich man kept a billion-dollar trove of looted Jewish art in this apartment. Should authorities have done more to report the discovery? Image by Getty Images
A Swiss museum will retain ownership of a Paul Cezanne painting in a Nazi-era collection after agreeing to exhibit the work regularly at a museum in the French artist’s hometown of Aix-en-Provence, the artist’s heirs said on Tuesday.
La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, a landscape from 1897, is among works amassed by German art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt after he was enlisted by the Nazis to sell so-called “degenerate” modern art they had seized from German museums.
His son, Cornelius Gurlitt, kept the trove stored in his Munich apartment for decades, before leaving it to the Bern Museum of Fine Arts when he died at 81 in 2014.
In a statement, Cezanne’s heirs acknowledged the painting had not been stolen by the Nazis, at least according to available information, but said there was a gap in its provenance before it became part of the Gurlitt collection after 1940.
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