The Dutch government had undertaken to strengthen the control of works of art arriving in public collections after the Second World War.
At first glance, it was a painting like any other by Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831-1915). The painter’s seascape that hung for decades in the office of the presidency of the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, has long charmed MPs and evening visitors with its string of small fishing boats seized between a beach at the frothy foam and the grayness of the sky. Until last month. Of uncertain origin, it could be a property looted by the Nazis during the Second World War.
Read alsoGermany to return monumental 15th-century Calvary to Namibia
Falling into the eye of inspectors from the Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency at the end of May, the painting of dubious origin was immediately reported. “It is my moral responsibility to cooperate in this area”, said the president of the Tweede Kamer, Vera Bergkamp, quoted by RTL Nieuws, on May 23. The painting was immediately removed from his office in The Hague while Dutch experts continue to examine the various works of art on display in the galleries, chambers and offices of the Dutch Parliament.
Hunt for works expelled from their collections
The marine scene painted by Hendrik Willem Mesdag was promptly replaced by another painting, “also lovely”, in the words of Vera Bergkamp. The new canvas could ensure a long interregnum. The Dutch specialists will take the time necessary to pierce the provenance of the marine painting before bringing it back to its destination, to Parliament or to the descendants of despoiled owners. This extensive work of general inspection of Dutch public collections was announced in June 2021.
Read alsoThe Netherlands is in dialogue with its former colonies to prepare restitutions
The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands reviews in particular the works of the Kunstbezit, a fund which preserves some 3,500 art objects looted or sold during the time of the German occupation, between 1940 and 1945. Torn from their Jewish owners by the Nazis, these works were returned after the war to the Dutch authorities, with the idea of returning them to their original family or their heirs. But this process, slow and incomplete, remained unfinished, thus leaving thousands of works in the hands of the State, placed in deposit and exhibited, in particular in Parliament and in embassies.
Technical progress now makes it possible to carry out an in-depth re-examination of this collection, which had already been examined after the Second World War. One of the last restitutions concerns two paintings worth less than 500 euros. They were returned last month to a Jewish family that had been dispossessed nearly 80 years ago. In Paris, a bill aimed at removing fifteen works from French collections, including paintings by Gustav Klimt and Marc Chagall, was adopted in February, before restitution. The idea of a framework law facilitating these returns “in the time”had been mentioned by President Emmanuel Macron in October 2021.