Renowned Jewish artist Marc Chagall’s painting “The Father,” which was looted from a Jewish family in Poland by the Nazis in World War II and returned to the owner’s descendants earlier this year, has sold at auction for $7.4 million.
The Father, a 1911 oil on canvas portrait of Chagall’s father, was purchased in 1928 by David Sander, a Jewish violin maker living in Poland. Sander lost all his possessions when the family was sent to the Lodz ghetto after the Nazi occupation.
The family was then deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp, where Sander’s wife and daughter were murdered. Sander himself survived the Holocaust and moved to France in 1958 and lived there until his death eight years later, but was unable to return the painting to his possession.
The person who purchased the work after the war was Chagall himself, who did not know that it had been looted from its rightful owners, and the painting was shown in exhibitions around the world. Chagall died in France in 1985, and the painting was transferred to the national collections and exhibited at the Center Pompidou in Paris.
Earlier this year, the French Parliament approved a bill for the return of 15 works of art looted by the Nazis to the Jewish families they belonged to, among the works being “The Father”. However, the members of the Sander family decided to put the piece up for sale.
On Tuesday evening, the painting was one of 46 works sold at the Phillips auction house in New York. Early estimates were that the painting would sell for $6 to $8 million, and in the end an unknown buyer paid $7.4 million.
“The heartbreaking and fascinating history of the painting after its completion, all that led to the wonderful news of its return to the Sander family, makes the story of ‘The Father’ even more fascinating,” concluded Jeremiah Everts, vice chairman of the auction house.