[MSN] Goudstikker: Marei von Saher: I am a believer that beautiful paintings should be seen by people, basically, what is in the exhibit are works that we love.

[MSN]

The circle of art

+++++++++++++++++++++++

"I'm a believer that beautiful paintings should be seen by people," she
says. "Basically, what's in the exhibit are works that we love."

Basicaly all Goudstikker paintings were in public exhibitions, and could be
seen by people. Owing to Marei von Saher (she never even met Goudstikker)
many of the Goudstikker paintings have disappeared in private collections
because Von Saher put them up at auctions.

Ton Cremers

+++++++++++++++++++++++


Georgette Gouveia | The Journal News

There's a painting in the office of Peter Sutton, executive director of the
Bruce Museum, that is about to be moved downstairs as part of a new exhibit.

The work is Jan Steen's 1671 oil "The Sacrifice of Iphigenia," which tells
the story of how Agamemnon was forced to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia so
the Greeks could sail off to fight Troy. Iphigenia embraces her fate,
understanding that the only thing she can control is her heroic response to
it.

Marei von Saher, the owner of the painting, knows all about fate.

"You can't escape it," says von Saher, a Greenwich resident. "What is meant
to be is meant to be."

In the spring of 1940, her father-in-law, Jacques Goudstikker - a man she
never met - was the premier dealer in Old Masters in Amsterdam.

Goudstikker (HOWCH sticker) had everything - a glamorous wife, the soprano
Désirée von Halban Kurz; a baby son, Eduard, affectionately called "Edo"; a
gallery whose visitors included Queen Wilhelmina, and a country estate,
Castle Nyenrode, where he could indulge his love of cooking and
entertaining.

Then the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, and it was all gone - the gallery,
the estate, some 1,400 paintings, including Iphigenia's sacrifice. Days
after the invasion, he fled with his family aboard the SS Bodegraven only to
die when he fell through an uncovered hatch at night after coming onto the
deck for some fresh air. He was 42.

Fate, however, has a way of coming full circle.

In 2006, the Dutch government agreed to restore to von Saher - the widow of
Goudstikker's only child - 200 of the paintings looted from the gallery by
the Nazis that had wound up in Dutch national collections after the war. The
challenge by von Saher and her younger daughter, Charlène, is one of the
largest restitution awards in art history.

Viewers can see some of the fruits of that struggle in "Reclaimed: Paintings