Vienna Museum Returns Nazi-Looted Painting
A Jewish museum in Vienna returned a painting that was seized by the Nazis in 1938 to the artist’s grandnieces on Friday, part of a wider move in Austria to deal with art illegally acquired after Germany annexed the country in 1938.
The 1922 work “The coffee hour. Fanny, the sister of the artist” by Jewish artist Jehudo Epstein, was handed to the granddaughter of the woman in the painting, Anne Starkey, who traveled from Britain to receive the piece, the museum said.
The painting was given to the Jewish Museum in 2010 and the museum’s own inquiry into its provenance found it should be returned to the painter’s heirs.
Epstein traveled to South Africa in 1934, leaving many of his possessions, including the painting, with a friend in Vienna. When the Nazis annexed Austria, Epstein stayed in exile in South Africa and the painting was confiscated by the Nazis.
Epstein died in South Africa in 1945.
Last year, Austria’s Der Standard newspaper reported that hundreds of books and works of art now in the Jewish Museum may have been stolen by the Nazis.
The museum is in discussion with other heirs of Epstein in a separate restitution case, the spokesman said.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
