Britain’s Tate Gallery To Return Nazi-Looted Painting
Britain’s Tate Gallery said it would return a Nazi-looted painting to the heirs of an art collector from Hungary.
The gallery announced on March 27 that it would return the 1824 painting “Beaching a Boat, Brighton” by John Constable. The artwork had been loaned to museums in the United States as late as 2006, The New York Times reported.
In a report, the British government panel settling claims on alleged Nazi-looted artworks said the painting should be returned to the anonymous heirs of Budapest art collector Baron Ferenc Hatvany. The Spoliation Advisory Panel criticized the museum for not attempting to establish the painting’s provenance.
The museum said it would recommend to its trustees at its next meeting in May that the painting be returned, according to The New York Times.
Hatvany, a Christian convert from Judaism, had his art stolen while he was in hiding during World War II.
A donor gave the painting to the museum in 1986.
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