Restitutions Committee sets course and carries on working flat out
Artikel10 February 2023
Following the recent departure of two of its members, the Restitutions Committee (RC) is taking all possible steps in order […]
THE HAGUE, 2 June 2020 – The Restitutions Committee has advised the Minister of Education, Culture and Science to reject the application for restitution of the painting View in the Woods in the Winter by Johann Bernard Klombeck and Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven. The Minister has accepted this advice.
The painting concerned has been in the possession of the Dutch State since 1950 and is referred to on the Museum Acquisitions since 1933 website. This website contains images of works of art that are suspected of having been stolen, confiscated or sold under duress between 1933 and 1945. A grandson of an art collector in The Hague asked the Minister of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) to restitute the painting. The painting supposedly came from the possessions of this art collector, who is known to have lost possession of many artworks during the Second World War.
The Minister asked the Restitutions Committee to advise her about this restitution application. In this regard the Restitutions Committee asked the Restitution Expertise Centre of the NIOD to conduct an investigation into the facts. It emerged from this investigation that the painting concerned never belonged to the collection of the art collector from The Hague. The Committee has therefore advised the Minister of OCW to reject the restitution application. It has furthermore emerged from the Restitution Expertise Centre’s investigation that during the 1921-1948 period the painting was in the possession of a woman in Soestdijk, so there is no longer any reason to label the painting’s provenance as suspect.
The full text of the recommendation is on this website through the link on the bottom of this page.
The Advisory Committee on the Assessment of Restitution Applications for Items of Cultural Value and the Second World War advises about claims to items of cultural value lost during the Nazi period, also referred to as looted art. Since the Restitutions Committee was established in 2002 it has issued 162 recommendations and opinions and has had 183 claims submitted to it. The Committee is chaired by Fred Hammerstein.
Relevant recommendation: Painting View in the Woods in the Winter
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News
10 February 2023
Following the recent departure of two of its members, the Restitutions Committee (RC) is taking all possible steps in order […]
7 November 2023
The RC has advised the State Secretary for Culture and Media to restitute the watercolour The Aunts Go on a Journey by Alexander Hugo Bakker Korff to the heirs of Jacob Lierens (1877-1949). On the grounds of research conducted by the Expert Centre Restitution the Committee concludes that it is highly likely that the watercolour came from the private collection of Jewish art collector Jacob Lierens of Amsterdam. Research has also shown that it is sufficiently plausible that he lost possession of the watercolour involuntarily as a result of circumstances directly related with the Nazi regime.
15 December 2022
The Restitutions Committee’s advice to the State Secretary for Culture and Media and its binding opinions concerning Amsterdam City Council and The Hague City Council are to the effect that a total of six artworks should be restituted to the beneficiaries of Emma Budge (1852-1937). On the basis of the investigation by the Expert Centre Restitution (ECR), among other things, the Restitutions Committee concludes that it is highly plausible that the artworks were the property of the German-Jewish Emma Budge and that it is sufficiently plausible that her beneficiaries involuntarily lost possession of them after her death.