Among the 15 works is “Roses under the trees by Gustav Klimt”, kept at the Musée d’Orsay.
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Fifteen works, including paintings by Gustav Klimt and Marc Chagall, can be returned to the heirs of Jewish families despoiled by the Nazis. Unanimous, the Parliament authorized Tuesday evening February 15 this return, via a bill which is intended “historical”.
After the National Assembly unanimously on January 25, the Senate dominated by the right validated this text by a show of hands, to the applause of these heirs or their representatives present in the gallery.
The Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot welcomed a law “historical” by which, for the first time in seventy years, “a government initiates a process allowing the restitution of works from public collections looted during the Second World War or acquired in troubled conditions during the Occupation, due to anti-Semitic persecution”. A bill was needed to derogate from the principle of inalienability of public collections.
Among the 15 works is Rosebushes under the trees by Gustav Klimt, kept at the Musée d’Orsay, the only work by the Austrian painter belonging to the French national collections. It was acquired in 1980 by the State from a merchant. Extensive research has established that it belonged to the Austrian Eléonore Stiasny who sold it during a forced sale in Vienna in 1938, during the Anschluss, before being deported and murdered.
Eleven drawings and a waxwork preserved in the Musée du Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée du Château de Compiègne, as well as a painting by Utrillo preserved in the Musée Utrillo-Valadon (Crossroads in Sannois), are also part of the refunds provided.
For 13 of the 15 works, the beneficiaries were identified by the Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliation (CIVS), created in 1999.