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Cambridge museum to return 19th-century painting stolen by Nazis to Jewish owner

 Gustave Courbet - Image Library, Fitzwilliam Museum
Gustave Courbet - Image Library, Fitzwilliam Museum

Cambridge is set to return a painting stolen by the Nazis to the heirs of its original Jewish owner after government experts told the university to hand back the loot.

Gustave Courbet’s landscape La Ronde Enfantine was seized by German invaders from the Paris flat of engineer Robert Bing in 1941, an advisory panel has found, after concerns were raised about the provenance of the artwork.

The Spoliation Advisory Panel panel which advises the UK government on Nazi loot told Cambridge to return the painting currently hanging in the Fitzwilliam Museum to the surviving heirs of Mr Bing.

The museum has confirmed that it will follow the recommendations of the panel, which found that the painting was originally taken in a “deliberate seizure by the German authorities from a Jewish citizen of France with the diversion of the work of art to Nazi leaders”.

A report added: “No other reason for seizure other than the Jewishness of Mr Bing has appeared to explain this seizure. We are satisfied that the heirs of the owner of the painting have a strong claim to restitution.”

Gustave Courbet - Image Library, Fitzwilliam Museum
Gustave Courbet - Image Library, Fitzwilliam Museum

Mr Bing had fled from the Nazi advance in 1940, leaving his apartment to be occupied. He later joined the French Resistance.

Experts were satisfied with evidence presented by descendants of Mr Bing that the painting was seized in Paris by the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce, an organisation tasked with looting cultural artefacts for the Nazi state and held with the possible intention of handing it over to Hermann Göring.

Research found that the whereabouts of the painting were “unknown in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War” before it emerged with a Swiss art dealer who sold it to a London company in 1951.

The painting was sold the same year to the Dean of York, The Very Reverend Eric Milner-White, who immediately donated the artwork to the Fitzwilliam Museum.

The Spoliation Advisory Panel said that its recommendation that the painting be returned  “implies no criticism of the Museum or the original donor, The Very Reverend Eric Milner-White, who have acted honourably and in accordance with the standards prevailing at the time of acquisition and since”.