London's Tate Gallery will return a Constable painting to the heirs of Baron Ferenc Hatvany from whom, according to the British government, it was looted by Nazi troops in 1944.
According to a Thursday statement by the gallery, the institution accepts a recommendation by a committee of the British culture ministry, and will restitute Beaching a Boat, Brighton to unnamed heirs that filed a claim for the picture.
According to the online version of The Art Newspaper, the heirs filed their claim two years ago to the Spoliation Advisory Panel of the UK government, which is to locate and restitute art objects stolen at the time of the Holocaust and then taken to Britain.
The panel's report said that the painting, bought by the baron at a Paris auction in 1908, had been “taken in the course of anti-Semitic persecution of the collector and his family by the German occupying forces either from one of his homes or from a bank vault”. The heirs “therefore have a strong moral claim for the restitution of the painting”, the report added.
The panel also criticised Tate for its "failure to investigate the Constable's provenance" and said that “it would not have been difficult to have made enquires of the Hungarian government, [which] included the painting on its official [1998] list of looted art from the late 1940s.”
According to the online version of The Art Newspaper, the heirs filed their claim two years ago to the Spoliation Advisory Panel of the UK government, which is to locate and restitute art objects stolen at the time of the Holocaust and then taken to Britain.
The panel's report said that the painting, bought by the baron at a Paris auction in 1908, had been “taken in the course of anti-Semitic persecution of the collector and his family by the German occupying forces either from one of his homes or from a bank vault”. The heirs “therefore have a strong moral claim for the restitution of the painting”, the report added.
The panel also criticised Tate for its "failure to investigate the Constable's provenance" and said that “it would not have been difficult to have made enquires of the Hungarian government, [which] included the painting on its official [1998] list of looted art from the late 1940s.”
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