Le Repos, paysanne couchée dans l’herbe, Pontoise (1882) by Camille Pissarro

On December 4, we are sharing the very moving story of the rediscovery of looted artwork Le Repos, paysanne couchée dans l’herbe, Pontoise (1882) by Camille Pissarro.

Le Repos, paysanne couchée dans l´herbe, Pontoise, painted by Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) in 1882 is linked, like all looted art, to a tragic history.

The painting had been sold by Pissarro himself to Parisian art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel in 1882.

Years later, it used to belong to Jaap and Ellen van den Bergh, who lived in the Netherlands. In the 1940s, after the Nazi regime instituted antisemitic ordinances and deportations started, the van den Bergh couple went into hiding as a Catholic family in Haarlem. To put their two daughters, Rosemarie and Marianne, to safety they sent them to a foster family in Katwijk. The van den Bergh survived through the war while hiding but they had to sell Pissarro’s Le Repos to pay for their living expenses. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to them, their daughters were sent to another foster which happened to be Jewish and they were both deported.

The Pisarro painting was never restituted to the van den Berghs — that is, until more recently. In the Hague in 2015, researchers from the Dutch National Archives were investigating an artwork that went missing during WWII and found a restitution claim document from the late 1940s describing Le Repos, along with the name of the artist and indications of dimensions, signature and date. There was also a mention written by the claimant Jaap van den Bergh himself stating: “I was forced to sell the aforementioned piece to procure currency to survive … Been in hiding for four years”.

Provenance researcher Annelies Kool began investigating the artwork and tried to locate the painting and the family of the original owners. She very quickly found the artwork in the Kunsthalle Bremen museum in Germany, where it was on display since 1967. She then found the trace of a surviving heir of the van den Bergh family, a daughter who was born after the war. 

Following these rediscoveries, an uncommon agreement was reached between the museum and the van den Bergh daughter, through Dutch restitution expert Rudi Ekkart: Le Repos will be kept in the Kunsthalle Bremen but the museum will contribute to the publishing costs of a book narrating the story and tragic losses of the van den Bergh family. The museum also reached a financial settlement with the van den Bergh heir. This agreement has avoided a long and difficult legal battle to obtain the restitution of the painting, also since the painting was in the museum collection since 1967. 

The book untitled The Girl in the Grass: The Tragic Fate of the Van den Bergh Family and the Search for a Painting narrates the history of the van den Berghs starting before the war in almost 200 pages, including touching family pictures. It was made possible thanks to Annelies Kool, as well as provenance researcher Eelke Muller who helped the van den Bergh heir to reconstruct her family’s story.

Pissarro’s Le Repos will be exhibited at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam until March 2025 — alongside Impressionist artworks which have inspired Van Gogh himself. It will then be returned to the Bremen museum, with a new label stating its origins and history with the van den Bergh family.
For art editor Evelien Campfens, “In many restitutions, it’s about the reparation of justice and restoration of rights [focusing on] the story that needs to be told.”

Sources:

Lootedart.com official website (https://www.lootedart.com/news.php?r=WXY0EU377681)

Annelies Kool, Eelke Muller, The Girl in the Grass. The Tragic Fate of the Van den Bergh Family and the Search for a Painting, 2025, Waanders & de Kunst Publishers.

Joachim Pissarro, Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro. Catalogue critique de peintures, 3 tomes, Wildenstein Institute, Paris 2005, tome 2 (OCLC 644151612), p. 456f, n° 683.

Agathe Hakoun, “L’incroyable histoire d’un tableau de Pissarro dérobé par les nazis dévoilée au Van Gogh Museum d’Amsterdam”, in Connaissance des arts, November 19, 2024

Nina Siegal, “Their Pissarro Is Staying in Germany, but Their Story Is Getting Out”, in The New York Times, November 13, 2024

Angelica Villa, “German Museum Will Keep Pissarro in Settlement with Heir of Persecuted Owner”, in ARTnews, November 15, 2024