A British gallery may be forced to give up a prized £500,000 Renoir after claims it could have been seized from its original Jewish owners by the Nazis.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Manchester Art Gallery is now treating the Impressionist painting – known as Seated Nude, from around 1897 – as a potential looted or ‘spoliated’ object.
The gallery has been approached by claimants who believe they may be the rightful owners of the oil painting.
If their claim of ownership is proved, the gallery could be forced to hand over the artwork.
Details of the investigation are included in a document obtained by the MoS under freedom of information laws.
The Impressionist painting Seated Nude, from around 1897, could have been seized from its original Jewish owners by the Nazis
It states: ‘This painting is under investigation as a spoliated object, which means it may have been stolen from or sold under duress by its Jewish owner during the period of Nazi power in Europe.’
Both sides agree that the artwork was once the property of Richard Semmel, a German-born Jewish art collector and entrepreneur.
Semmel and his wife Clara, who fled Germany for Holland in 1933, managed to arrange for the sale of about 70 of their artworks to pay for their living expenses.
It is believed the Renoir nude was offered up for the sale but did not sell.
In 1934 the painting was acquired by Lady Marks of Broughton, who bought it from a consortium representing a number of international art dealers.
Manchester Art Gallery is now treating the Impressionist painting as a potential looted or ‘spoliated’ object
Manchester Art Gallery and legal representatives acting for the claimants are now looking at the circumstances in which the consortium acquired the artwork, and in whose name it was acting.
It is known that assets owned by the Semmels, including some of their artworks, were targeted by the Nazis. The couple, who escaped to the United States just before the German invasion of Holland, spent their latter years in New York.
They had no children and Semmel, who died a widower in 1950, named family friend and companion Grete Gross-Eisenstadt as his heir. Her grandchildren, who are now based in South Africa and Israel, believe they may have a rightful claim for the Renoir.
Over the years, the Gross-Eisenstadt heirs have been successful in establishing ownership of works in both public and private collections. In 2012, the private owners of another Renoir painting, called Paysage Pres De Cagnes, agreed to pay compensation to the heirs. Two years later, they persuaded the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne to relinquish a work known as Head Of A Man, once attributed to Van Gogh.
It will be up to the Government’s Spoliation Advisory Panel to advise on the validity of any claim in relation to Manchester Art Gallery, which was presented with the Renoir in 1972 by the executors of Lady Marks’s will.
A spokesman for the gallery declined to comment.
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