Gurlitt Liebermann to be sold
May 25 2015
Picture: NYT
A picture by Max Liebermann (above) that formed part of the Gurlitt collection is to be sold at Sotheby's with an estimate of £550,000. The picture has been consigned by David Toren, who is 90, and remembers seeing the picture being looted by the Nazis in 1938. The New York Times reports:
Mr. Toren, who lives now in New York, last saw the painting when he was 13, the day after Kristallnacht in 1938. It was hanging in the conservatory of his uncle’s country estate in Germany on the day that Mr. Friedmann, a brick factory owner, was forced to sign over his home to a Nazi general.
The painting was sold by Nazi authorities after Mr. Friedmann’s death of natural causes in 1942 and ended up in the hands of Hildebrandt Gurlitt, a Nazi-era art dealer. Three years later, the painting was seized by the “Monuments Men” unit for the allies and stored in Wiesbaden. But because of missing documentation, the painting was returned to Mr. Gurlitt in 1950 and ultimately hung on a wall in the Munich apartment of his son, Cornelius Gurlitt.
