[MSN] Netherlands Buys Back Nazi-Looted Paintings Returned to Heirs

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Netherlands Buys Back Nazi-Looted Paintings Returned to Heirs

By Joana Quintanilha

March 6 (Bloomberg) -- The Dutch government paid 3 million euros ($3.9 million) to buy back four 17th-century pictures returned last year to the heir of art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, a gallery owner who fled the advancing Nazis.

Marei von Saher, Goudstikker's daughter-in-law and the heir, will donate a fifth painting to the government, according to an e-mailed statement today from Lawrence Kaye, a lawyer at Herrick, Feinstein LLP in New York who is representing the heirs. The five old masters will return to museums in Gouda, Den Bosch, Utrecht and Delft, the government said in a statement.

Goudstikker abandoned 1,400 artworks when he escaped the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. He took with him a black notebook recording over 1,000 of the pictures. Hermann Goering looted the gallery weeks later. The paintings were recovered from Germany after the war and incorporated into the Dutch National Art Collection. In February 2006 the Netherlands restituted 200 paintings looted by the Nazis to Von Saher.

Von Saher is donating ``Child on Deathbed'' by Bartholomeus van der Helst, from about 1645. The four paintings purchased by the Dutch government are ``Architectural Fantasy With Figures'' (1633) by Dirck van Delen, two portraits by the Utrecht artist Paulus Moreelse and Daniel Vosmaer's 1665 ``View of Delft.''

Von Saher said in the statement she is ``very pleased that we have been able to find a way to convey some important artworks from the Goudstikker Collection to the Dutch government in an amicable fashion.''

Christie's International, which has a big business selling art for Nazi victims' heirs, said last month it will auction half of the 200 old masters returned to Von Saher by the Dutch government. Christie's will offer pictures at three sales: April 19 in New York, July 5 in London, and in November in Amsterdam.

Von Saher is still working to recover other looted pictures located in Europe and the U.S.

To contact the reporter on this story: Joana Quintanilha in Amsterdam at quintanilha at bloomberg.net 

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