The heirs of a German-Jewish woman have abandoned their legal fight against the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Toledo Museum of Art to reclaim paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin that they allege were forcibly sold during Nazi rule.
The family of Martha Nathan has dropped its appeals challenging the ownership of van Gogh's Les Becheurs, being housed in Detroit, and Gauguin's Street Scene in Tahiti, on display at the Ohio museum.
Detroit Institute of Arts director Graham Beal, pictured here in February, says he's pleased the ownership issue of van Gogh's Les Becheurs is now resolved.
(Carlos Osorio/Associated Press)
"We are pleased that the issue has been resolved in the best interest of the museum and the public," said Graham Beal, director of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
The descendants of Nathan's siblings told both museums in 2004 that the works were sold under duress for less than their market value.
Nathan was a member of a banking family that immigrated to France from Germany in 1937 to escape the Nazis.
Both cases have already been dismissed because the claims had exceeded the statute of limitations, which usually requires that a claim be made within three years of the sale of an item.
Regardless, the Detroit Institute of Arts researched the claims and discovered that the paintings had been sold voluntarily to art dealers in Paris.
The van Gogh — showing two figures digging beneath some trees — had been sold to a group of Jewish art dealers in Paris in 1938 and then resold to Detroit art collector Robert Tannahill in 1941.
The Gauguin was also sold to the same consortium of dealers. The Toledo museum bought it directly from one of the dealers in 1939. The work, featuring native people walking on a dirt path under an evening sky, was bought for $25,000 US.
Nathan died in 1958. Her brother sought compensation for his family's wartime losses in a U.S. Federal Court in 1973 but there is no record of either pursuing restitution for the paintings.
Current market value for each painting is estimated to be between $10 million US and $15 million US.
With files from the Associated Press
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