Quai de Clichy, Temps gris (1887) by Paul Signac (1863-1935) — The Case of the Gurlitt Collection Looted Art

On December 3, we are sharing the story of the restitution of looted artwork Quai de Clichy, Temps gris (1887) by Paul Signac (1863-1935), which was a part of the looted art case of the Gurlitt Collection.

Paul Signac oil on canvas Quai de Clichy, Temps gris (1887) is not only a highly representative artwork of Signac’s iconic pointillist style. Its history has made it part of the very complex looted art case involving German art dealer and historian Hildebrand Gurlitt (1895-1956) and his son, Cornelius Gurlitt (1932-2014).

In the 1930s and 1940s, Hildebrand Gurlitt was an art historian and dealer, described by U.S. Captain and American Monuments officer Robert Posey as an “art collector with high Nazi connections”. Because of his Jewish background, Gurlitt had initially encountered issues to advance his career and finally turned to the fascist party in order to access high-level positions. Indeed, he was appointed as expert for the Nazi Commission for the exploitation of the so-called “degenerate art”. Degenerate art was defined by the Nazi Party as any pieces of art which did not respect the Nazi ideals of art and moral values. As explained by propaganda minister Goebbel, the idea was to find a way to make “money from this garbage”.

Aside from his expert position, Gurlitt kept his art dealing activity during the war, also on the Parisian art market during the Nazi occupation, at which time he was very active as a “buyer for the Führer’s collection”, as mentioned by Matthias Frehner, the Kunstmuseum Bern director in 2015. At the end of the war, the ownership of his collection was questioned by the Monuments Men who investigated for more than five years. Gurlitt was placed at the time under house arrest by the U.S. Army who placed his collection under its care. He was interrogated by French Monuments officer and Resistance heroine Rose Valland about the origins of his collection. Gurlitt provided them with the affidavits for the paintings. The investigation lasted until the 1950s but was unsuccessful to contradict Gurlitt’s claims, also due to information not yet available to the Monuments Men at the time. Therefore the artworks were returned to Gurlitt. He died in a road accident in 1956, leaving his estate to his son, Cornelius.

Cornelius Gurlitt who lived from his father’s art collection without any other source of income re-launched the investigation into the family collection decades later, when he was arrested at the border between Switzerland and Germany by custom officers in 2010. He was found with 9,000 euros in cash in his possession. This amount was within the legal authorized limit but aroused suspicions by the tax authorities, who requested access to his Munich residence. He was under suspicion of selling stolen artworks on the black market. 

Unexpectedly, when his Munich apartment was searched in 2012 a trove of more than a thousand incredible art pieces was found. The investigations which pursued in other residences in the following years led to the discovery of over 1,500 artworks, including by artists such as Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Franz Marc, Camille Pissarro, Paul Signac, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall. In 2013, the news of the discovery were reported in the press.

Cornelius Gurlitt initially stated the artworks had been legally bought by his father, before agreeing in 2014 that if some items in the collection were found as being looted during WWII he would return them to the heirs of the original owners. In April 2014, Gurlitt agreed to collaborate with the governmental task force Schwabinger Kunstfund (which had been created in 2013) to research and return looted artworks in exchange of the return of his collection of art, which had been seized.

In May 2014, Gurlitt passed away due to illness. He bequeathed the art collection to the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland, with the condition that the museum researched the provenance of the paintings and proceeded with the restitutions when necessary. 

After becoming the new owner of the Gurlitt collection, the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland pursued the investigations on the potentially looted art. It made an agreement with the German Government and the State of Bavaria, asserting that all artworks with an uncertain provenance would become the property of the German State, which would be in charge for the restitution of stolen art. Therefore, only the artworks whose provenance would be asserted as without any issue would be accepted in the museum collection.

In 2016, the provenance research was taken over by the German Lost Art Foundation. By 2020, it had been estimated that only 14 artworks were clearly identified as being looted by the Nazis, out of which 13 of them were returned. The larger part, which amounts to around 1,000, were still being investigated and considered in a “large grey zone”.

In September 2022, the Kunstmuseum Bern opened the exhibition “Taking Stock. Gurlitt in review”, to be seen until January 2023. It offered an in-depth look at the Gurlitt collection and the investigations that followed this discovery. The exhibition underlined the ethical guidelines, the legal framework and the results of the international research project.

The research work done on the Gurlitt trove of art has made possible the restitution of several artworks: among these, Henri Matisse’s Femme assise dans un fauteuil (1921), Camille Pissarro’s La Seine vue du Pont-Neuf, au fond le Louvre (1902) and Paul Signac’s Quai de Clichy, Temps gris (1887). The latter, which had been seized in 1940, was finally returned to the heirs of original owner Gaston Prosper Lévy in July 2019. 

Sources:

German Lost Art Foundation official website (https://kulturgutverluste.de/en/meldungen/berner-kunstmuseum-eroeffnet-ausstellung-gurlitt-eine-bilanz)

Kunstmuseum Bern official website (https://www.kunstmuseumbern.ch/en/provenance-research/gurlitt-estate)

Monuments Men and Women Foundation, Update on the Cornelius Gurlitt Collection, November 13, 2013 (https://www.monumentsmenandwomenfnd.org/post/update-on-the-cornelius-gurlitt-collection)

Looted art.com official website, Germany: Gurlitt case (https://www.lootedart.com/QDES2J142461)

Apollo, “Forum: Should the Kunstmuseum Bern have accepted the Gurlitt bequest? — Interview with Matthias Frehner”, Apollo, March 30, 2015

Official exhibition catalogue, Gurlitt : Status report, Kunstmuseum Bern, Hirmer Verlag, November 17, 2017

BBC, “Gurlitt collection: Hoard of Nazi-era art set for Swiss museum”, BBC Website, December 15, 2016
SwissInfo, “Research formally ended into controversial Nazi art collection”, SwissInfo Website, May 26, 2020

Clara Baudry, “Spoliation nazie : le Kunstmuseum de Berne renonce à 38 œuvres de la collection Gurlitt”, Connaissance des arts, December 13, 2021

Sarah Cascone, “A Years-Long Research Project Into the Gurlitt Trove Has Ended Without Being Able to Resolve ‘a Very Large Gray Area’ Around 1,000 Works”, in Artnet, May 26, 2020

Sopan Deb, “Selection From Gurlitt Collection Arrives in Switzerland”, in The New York Times, July 7, 2017

Tessa Solomon, “Research on Gurlitt Trove of Art Possibly Looted by Nazis Concludes, Offering Few Answers”, in ARTnews, May 27, 2020

Angelica Villa, “Kunstmuseum Bern to Return Seven Works from Gurlitt Trove”, in ARTnews, December 13, 2021