Goudstikker Cranachs to stay at the Norton Simon

The principle of restitution of Nazi-looted art is well established, but determining the facts when the trail of ownership gets convoluted is not always possible.

A Los Angeles federal judge has dismissed a case that jeopardized the Norton Simon Museum's ownership of a nearly 500-year-old pair of paintings of Adam and Eve by German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder. . .

Cranach's monumental paintings of life-size nudes in the Garden of Eden have been a highlight of Simon's collection since 1971, when the Los Angeles industrialist and collector bought them from George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff, an heir of a noble Russian family thought to have lost the paintings to the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. But the Cranachs have a complicated history, at issue in the legal battle.

Von Saher's Dutch father-in-law, Jacques Goudstikker, bought the paintings in a 1931 auction in Berlin, billed as "Stroganoff Collection Leningrad" and staged to raise funds for Stalin's impoverished government. "Adam" and "Eve" remained in his gallery in Amsterdam until 1940, when the Nazis took over his business. Goudstikker died in a shipboard accident while fleeing the Germans, but his wife, Desiree, and son, Edward, survived, as did a list of artworks left behind.

After the war, Desiree Goudstikker settled with the Dutch government, regaining part of her husband's inventory. She did not claim another group of artworks, including the Cranachs, because she would have had to return payment received from the Germans. That settlement made it possible for Stroganoff-Scherbatoff to pursue his claim. The Dutch transferred the paintings to him in 1966.

Posted by David on October 19, 2007 3:07 PM