The Tate Britain gallery is set to reunite the great-grandchildren of a Belgian Jewish art collector with a painting looted from his home by the Nazis, officials said on Saturday.
Aeneas and his Family Fleeing Burning Troy was stolen from the home of Samuel Hartveld after he fled Antwerp, Belgium, with his wife in May 1940.
The artwork by English painter Henry Gibbs was one of hundreds of thousands the Nazis plundered from Jewish families during World War II.
Photo: Tate Britain via Reuters
Their restitution has been a slow process, often involving legal battles and complex international searches.
The return of the 1654 oil painting would mark the latest triumph for a special panel set up by the British government to investigate such works that have ended up in Britain’s public collections.
The Spoliation Advisory Panel ruled the Aeneas painting was “looted as an act of racial persecution” and has arranged for it to be returned to Hartveld’s heirs in the coming months, the British government’s culture department said.
A handover date has not yet been confirmed, but Hartveld’s family said they were “deeply grateful.”
“This decision clearly acknowledges the awful Nazi persecution of Samuel Hartveld and that the clearly looted painting belonged to Mr Hartveld, a Jewish Belgian art collector and dealer,” the trust representing Hartveld’s heirs and relatives said.
The painting depicts the Trojan hero Aeneas trying to rescue his family from the burning city. It was produced in the wake of the English Civil War, when scenes of devastation and families being split up would have been familiar.
The Tate collection bought the work from the Galerie Jan de Maere in Brussels in 1994, and the trust established by Hartveld’s heirs launched a claim in May last year.
“It is a profound privilege to help reunite this work with its rightful heirs,” Tate director Maria Balshaw said. “We now look forward to welcoming the family to Tate in the coming months and presenting the painting to them.”
Hartveld survived World War II but never recovered the art collection he had to leave behind.
Just before the end of the war, the US sent teams of museum directors, curators and art experts to Europe to rescue cultural treasures. Their efforts enabled the swift return of many of the looted works to their owners.
However, out of 650,000 stolen pieces, about 100,000 had not been returned by 2009, according to figures released at the Holocaust Era Assets Conference in the Czech Republic that year.
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS