Berlin museum returns, then buys back Nazi-looted Pissarro

The Pissarro painting was looted by the Nazis when they occupied France. CHRISTOF STACHE / AFP PHOTO.

BERLIN.- Berlin's Alte Nationalgalerie museum on Monday handed back and repurchased a painting by French Impressionist Camille Pissarro looted by the Nazis from the collection of Jewish lawyer Armand Dorville.

Representatives of the Dorville family signed an agreement for the museum to return and buy back "Une Place a la Roche-Guyon" ("A Square in La Roche Guyon"), part of the Berlin institution's permanent collection.

"I am very grateful to Armand Dorville's heirs for making it possible for us to purchase the work for the Alte Nationalgalerie and for coming to Berlin especially for this purpose," said Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK), which runs the Berlin museum.

He did not reveal how much the museum had paid for the painting but said the family wanted it to remain on public display and the deal had been achieved in a spirit of "good cooperation".

Painted in 1867, "A Square in La Roche Guyon" was acquired by Armand Dorville in Paris in 1928. After moving to the south of France, Dorville died in 1941 and his collection was distributed to museums and private collectors. The family was unable to flee occupied France and most members were killed by the Nazis, who occupied the country from 1940-1944. Several close relatives of Dorville's brother Charles perished at Auschwitz. The Alte Nationalgalerie acquired "A Square in La Roche Guyon" from a London gallery in 1961.

The Nazis stole thousands of artworks from Jewish families during World War II and their restitution has been a slow process, involving legal battles, complex searches and some stunning finds. The art plundered by the Nazi regime was intended to be resold, given to senior officials or displayed in the Fuehrermuseum (Leader's Museum) that Adolf Hitler planned for his hometown of Linz but was never built.

In January 2020, two paintings by Jean-Louis Forain and a third by Constantin Guys were returned to the heirs of Armand Dorville from the collection of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a Third Reich-era art dealer. More than 1,500 artworks were discovered in 2012 in the possession of the Munich pensioner, who died in 2014. His father, Hildebrand Gurlitt, had worked as an art dealer for the Nazis from 1938.

© Agence France-Presse
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The Pandora Papers Leak Reveals How the Late Dealer Douglas Latchford Used Offshore Accounts to Sell Looted Cambodian Antiquities

More revelations are likely forthcoming as journalists comb through the leak. Sarah Cascone, October 5, 2021

A bronze decoration from a late 12th century boat from Douglas Latchford's collection being repatriated to Cambodia. Photo by Matthew Hollow, courtesy of the Royal Government of Cambodia.

The Pandora Papers, a trove of 11.9 million documents leaked on Sunday, are revealing the shadowy business dealings of some the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people. Among the prominent names from the art world to emerge is that of late antiquities dealer Douglas Latchford, a leading Cambodian art scholar who, the papers show, used offshore trusts to sell looted art.

In 2019, just months before his death, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York had charged Latchford with trafficking Cambodian antiquities. He was accused of falsifying invoices, provenance documents, and shipping information to smuggle illicitly obtained artworks internationally.

When authorities got wind of Latchford’s shady dealings, it appears he attempted to better conceal his transactions by establishing trusts in tax havens, reports the Washington Post. (The newspaper is planning a series of articles detailing further contents of the leak.)

In February, Latchford’s daughter, Nawapan Kriangsak (formerly Julia Ellen Latchford Copleston), announced that her father’s $50 million collection of Khmer antiquities would be repatriated to Cambodia. The 125 pieces were considered the most important collection of ancient Cambodian art in private hands, although many were suspected of having been stolen.

British Khmer art collector Douglas Latchford during a function at the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh on June 12, 2009. Latchford, a well known collector of Khmer art, repatriated a number of Khmer antiquities during the event. Photo by Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP via Getty Images.

Some of the world’s leading museums are now coming under increased scrutiny over works in their collections that were once owned by the late collector. The Denver Art Museum has six, the British Museum has five, the Cleveland Museum of Art has three, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art has 12 pieces that list Latchford in the provenance, if not as the donor outright.

In 2013, the Met previously repatriated to Cambodia a pair of statues partially gifted by Latchford. Known as the “Kneeling Attendants,” the figures had been looted from the Koh Ker temple complex.

In light of the new revelations, the museum is now “reviewing the pieces that came to the Met’s collection via Latchford and his associates,” a spokesperson for the museum told Hyperallergic. “As we continue our research, we will engage with the government of Cambodia as needed, as we have had a strong and productive partnership with their cultural leaders in the past.”

In terms of the volume of data (2.9 terabytes, to be precise), the Pandora Papers are the largest offshore finance leak in history, exceeding the 11.5 million documents in the Panama Papers, published in April 2016, and the 1.4 terabytes of data in the Paradise Papers in 2017.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in Washington, D.C., obtained the Pandora Papers data from an unidentified source. The documents from 14 firms linked to secret offshore accounts belong to billionaires, celebrities, world leaders, and powerful companies.

Early estimates suggest that up to $32 trillion in funds are being moved through offshore financial channels to avoid taxation—and that’s not counting non-monetary assets such as art and real estate.

Among the other names associated with the art world is Helena de Chair, wife of British conservative party politician Jacob Rees-Mogg, whose holding company is the beneficiary of a trust that owns “pictures and paintings” worth $3.5 million.

Jacques-Louis David, The Anger of Achilles (1819). Collection of the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. The Pandora Papers reveal that a second version of the work belongs to Konstantin Ernst, a Russian film producer and head of the Russian TV network Channel One who works closely with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Then there is Konstantin Ernst, head of the Russian TV network Channel One who is widely credited for managing Vladimir Putin’s image. According to the Pandora Papers, Ernst owns one of two versions of the Jacques-Louis David oil painting The Anger of Achilles through an offshore company. The other copy of the work is in the collection of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. Ernst’s painting is worth $6.2 million, according to data reviewed by the ICIJ.

Works by Pablo Picasso and Banksy are also named in some of the documents, according to the Guardian.

“This is the Panama papers on steroids,” Gerard Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, told the Guardian. “It’s broader, richer and has more detail.”

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A broken frame, and DNA traces, led to arrest in van Gogh theft

Vincent van Gogh’s “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring.” Dutch prosecutors said that DNA evidence tied a man to the thefts of a van Gogh and a Frans Hals painting; he denies the charges. Via Groninger Museum via The New York Times. by Graham Bowley

NEW YORK, NY.- Nils M. was no rookie art thief. But prosecutors say he left behind DNA evidence on a broken picture frame at one museum and on a heavy-duty strap at another that helped Dutch investigators identify him as the man who stole paintings by van Gogh and Frans Hals in two daring heists.

A match in their database led them to the 59-year-old defendant who had previously served a five-year prison sentence for stealing a 17th-century gilded silver monstrance, or church vessel, from a museum in Gouda in 2012.

During that theft, Nils M. — who is being identified without his full surname because of Dutch privacy laws — used explosives to blow open the museum door.

In the more recent thefts, prosecutors are seeking a prison sentence of eight years for what they described as “exceptional crimes” that were committed with an as yet unidentified partner. The paintings — the van Gogh had an insured value of 2.5 million euros (about $2.9 million), and the Hals was valued at between 10 and 15 million euros (between $11.7 million and $17.6 million) — have not been recovered.

A three-judge panel is expected to rule on the case Friday.

“Breaking into a museum and taking paintings by artists who are world famous, pieces that belong to our cultural heritage, that are irreplaceable,” was “totally unacceptable,” the prosecutor in the case, Gabriëlle Hoppenbrouwers, said in court this month, according to a copy of the indictment.

In the court hearing, in Lelystad, the defendant denied the charges. “He said that he didn’t steal those paintings and he had nothing to do with it,” said his lawyer, Renske van Zanden.

But public prosecutors for the Central Netherlands region said that the DNA evidence from the picture frame and the strap, which was likely used in the getaway, points to him.

The van Gogh painting, “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring,” from 1884, was part of a temporary exhibition at the Singer Laren Museum, on loan from the Groninger Museum in Groningen.

Security camera footage of the robbery last year showed a man using a sledgehammer to smash two glass doors to break into the museum. He left with the painting under his arm.

Prosecutors said the painting’s frame was left behind in pieces in the parking lot. Some of those pieces bore traces of the suspect’s DNA, they said.

The Hals painting, “Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer,” from the 17th century, was stolen five months later, in August 2020, from a tiny museum, Museum Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden, in Leerdam. That robbery drew special notice because it was the third time that the painting had been stolen from the same small museum. (It was previously stolen in 2011 and 1988, but recovered both times.)

The back door had been broken open and police found an orange tension strap tied to a flagpole in the garden outside the museum that prosecutors believe was likely used to lower the Hals or the thief down a nearby 10-foot wall to a waiting scooter. A security camera showed two people driving away on the scooter. The passenger was carrying something square that looked like a small painting.

Also discovered two weeks before the robbery in Leerdam was an extendible ladder, submerged in a stretch of water near the base of the museum’s garden wall that prosecutors suspect could have been hidden there by the burglars to scale the wall. A passerby, however, noticed the ladder and moved it, possibly thwarting part of their plan, investigators said.

Prosecutors emphasized the strength of the DNA evidence at each of the scenes. But they said there were other compelling reasons to suggest the two thefts were carried out by the same man. Both thefts occurred sometime shortly after 3 a.m., involved heavy force to break into the museums, and involved an accomplice who helped the thief get away on a scooter, they said. Investigators have not identified an accomplice.

The museum in Leerdam is part of an almshouse for unmarried women that also showcases the collection of its 18th-century founder. It is largely run by volunteers who maintain the Hofje and its garden. Prosecutors said a trampled zucchini plant had helped investigators work out where the thief had climbed over the wall into the garden.

The defendant, Nils M., was arrested in April at his home in Baarn, a small town close to Laren. A firearm and ammunition were found in a search of his home, as were more than 10,000 ecstasy pills, prosecutors said.

Answering the charges in court earlier this month, Nils M., who works as a mechanic, said that he sometimes used the kind of strap found in Leerdam when he carried out repairs, which could explain the presence of his DNA on the strap. But he did not know how the strap got to Leerdam, his lawyer, van Zanden, said.

“He said that he often uses straps, for instance when he picks up car parts,” she elaborated in an email. “He also said that the straps were sometimes left behind.”

Van Zanden maintained that the DNA evidence from Laren was inconclusive, partly because there were matches to other people on the picture frame. She said that her client is taller than the man shown on the Laren footage, and said that the way the thief handled the hammer on the video suggested he was left-handed, while her client is right-handed.

The theft of the artworks by the two major Dutch artists within the period of a few months spawned numerous theories about why they had been stolen. In court, Hoppenbrouwers said prosecutors believed that the defendant had sold or given the paintings away, and they were now in the criminal underworld.

In the indictment, she suggested some reasons famous artworks remain popular among thieves even though they cannot be easily sold or displayed publicly. Such masterworks can have currency in the underworld, investigators believe, because they can be used to demand ransoms from the insurance companies that insure them and, in some cases, can be used in negotiations to obtain reduced prison sentences.

The works might also be used as collateral in drug deals, she said.

Arthur Brand, a private art detective who has followed both cases, said that he believes there is demand in the Dutch underworld for artworks. People accused of drug crimes think that a stolen artwork could potentially be surrendered to the authorities in exchange for a lesser sentence, he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times. https://artdaily.cc/news/139578/A-broken-frame--and-DNA-traces--led-to-arrest-in-van-Gogh-theft#.YVsmcprMLIU