British Museum Tate returns work that was robbed by Nazis with Jewish-Belgian collector (Antwerp)
© Henry Gibbs
The London Museum Tate Britain will visit a seventeenth-century painting back to the family of a Jewish-Belgian art collector. The work was taken away from his home during the German occupation. The return comes on the advice of the Spoliation Advisory Panel, the restitution committee of the British government.
The committee says the work from 1654, Aeneas fled the burning Troy with his family From the English painter Henry Gibbs, « was robbed as the act of racial persecution. » The heirs and great -grandchildren of Samuel Hartveld will get the work that the art collector left in Antwerp in May 1940 after he and his wife fled Belgium, says the British government on Saturday.
Hartveld survived the war, but never saw his collection again. It was suspected that most of the works were in galleries in Europe. Tate bought the work of Gibbs from Galerie Jan de Maere in Brussels in 1994. That happened after René van de Broek Antwerp had bought the collection and Hartveld’s house for an « insignificant sum », the committee says.
© Henry Gibbs
In May 2024, the Sonia Klein Trust, who bears the name of the founder of the foundation, the daughter of the widow of Hartveld, submitted a claim. In a press release, the managers of the Sonia Klein Trust say that they are « very grateful » for the decision to return the work. « This decision is a clear recognition of the terrible persecution by the Nazis of Samuel Hartveld. She also acknowledges that the ‘clearly stolen’ painting belonged to Mr. Hartveld, a Jewish -Belgian art collector and trader, » it sounded.
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The director of Tate, Maria Balshaw, says that it is a « great privilege to return the work to his rightful owners ». Although extensive research was carried out in the purchase in 1994, « crucial facts » were unknown about the previous owners.
