These watercolors and drawings by 19th century French artists were stolen in 1940 from Moïse Levi de Benzion, an Egyptian Jewish businessman.
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Four works stolen in France by the Nazis during World War II have been returned to the beneficiaries of their Jewish owner, the Ministry of Culture announced on Wednesday (December 22nd). These watercolors and drawings by 19th century French artists had been stolen, along with hundreds of others. œworks, in 1940 to Moses Levi de Benzion, an Egyptian Jewish businessman. He had assembled this large collection in his home in France, where he died during the war in 1943.
Watercolor, Countryside, by Georges Michel, a drawing by Paul Delaroche entitled Portrait of a woman and another drawing, of the same title, by Auguste Hesse, was in the custody of the Louvre. A watercolor by Jules-Jacques Veyrassat, Low tide at Grandcamp was kept by the Musée d’Orsay. These four œWorks, like all property looted during the Second World War and then found and entrusted in France to the care of national museums while awaiting their return, are called “National Museums Recovery” (MNR). Until these four new restitutions, 169 œOnly works had been returned since 1951, among some 2,200 “MNR” works, deposited in a hundred museums and registered in the inventory of “artistic recovery”.