Mon 31 Mar 2008
This is a particularly interesting news article about a work once owned by Hitler and how researchers came to identify it as from his “collection.” Note also the reference to the Art Newspaper as “the bible of the art world.” Have you guys been to the Art Newspaper yet?
March 31st, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Wow…. can you imagine just walking into a storeroom of precious art and deciding what you wanted and just walk out with a painting? This seems like something you would see only in a movie. It ‘s unreal that the Patricia Lochridge Hartwell would be able to have access to a warehouse of Nazi paintings and just take what she wanted and leave for the US. I wonder what Hartwell thought all of those years with this painting… all the time knowing it was probably looted from some innocent Jewish family during the war. Surely she would know that it was part of the stolen art? Hmmm, I wonder how people rationalized these acts during the war. Could it be that since the Nazi’s stole it first then stealing it again would make things right? Let’s show those Nazi’s …. We’ll steal it right back … and never think to find the real owner. I think not. It makes me think of the inhumanity of war- on both sides. So many times we focus on the evil acts committed by the Nazis; I think war is so much more complicated than that.
Then once the piece is in the US, Hartwell decided to try to sell it. She couldn’t get the MET to buy it, so they found Silbermann. I find it very odd that the E & A Silbermann (dealer) can just say to the National Gallery that they bought the work from an auction in 1909 and it raised no red flags. While I might not know much about the art world or the workings of a gallery, it seems to me that if my business had acquired a painting in 1909 I would have sold it well before 1963. Isn’t that what dealers do- sell paintings? Why sit on the painting for 54 years?
These types of goings on really begin to make me a bit cynical. It seems the only really good guy is Patricia Hartwell’s son.