Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Nazi-Looted Renoir Returned To Jewish Art Dealer’s Last Heir

(JTA) — A Renoir painting that the Nazis stole from a Paris bank vault was returned to the heir of its owner.

On Wednesday, U.S. authorities returned the 1919 work “Deux Femmes Dans Un Jardin” to Sylvie Sulitzer of France, the last remaining heir of her grandfather Alfred Weinberger, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. The painting by the famed Impressionist is worth at least $300,000.

Although Sulitzer knew her grandfather, she had no idea about the missing Renoir until a German law firm, specialists in recovering art looted by the Nazis from Jewish families, contacted her in the early 2010s, Agence France-Presse reported.

“I’m very thankful to be able to show my beloved family wherever they are that after all they’ve been through, there is justice,” Sulitzer said.

Her grandfather was a prominent art collector in prewar Paris.

Four other Renoirs and a Delacroix, which her grandfather also owned, have yet to be recovered, Sulitzer told AFP.

The Nazis stole the art in December 1941 from the bank vault where Weinberger stored his collection when he fled Paris at the outset of World War II.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.