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Fifteen works of art will soon be returned to the heirs of Jewish families who were looted by the Nazis. A law in the process of being adopted will make it possible to resolve this legal void. This is the case of the painting by Utrillo, which will be rendered by the town of Sannois in the Val-d’Oise.
For nearly four years, Maurice Utrillo’s painting has been kept in a safe place, in a secret location. It is about to be returned to its legal owner, 82 years after it was stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish collector. The mayor of Sannois (Val-d’Oise) had bought it in good faith for the city museum, without knowing that it was a looted work. “I don’t at all feel like this work is being taken away from me. She doesn’t belong to me, she finds her family (…) It’s just to do justice“, comments Bernard Jamet, the mayor.
It is an investigation carried out seven years ago which will make it possible to discover the past of the painting. The historian Elizabeth Royer-Grimblat, a specialist in looted works, was working on the paintings of Maurice Utrillo when she realized that the canvas was in the German archives. Considered too modern by Goring, German war criminal, the painting will then be exchanged in 1942 against the library of a collector. It will reappear at auction, where the town of Sannois buys it. But it will be necessary to wait for the promulgation of a law to return the painting to its universal legatee.