Eighty years after they were looted from a Jewish family during the Nazi Occupation of France, two 17th-century still-life paintings have been returned to the heirs of their rightful owners – who have donated them to the Louvre Museum in Paris.
The two paintings, "Still Life with Ham" by Dutch artist Floris van Schooten and "Food, Fruit and Glass on a Table" by Peter Binoit of Germany, are now displayed alongside historical documents giving information on the Javals – the family that owned them until 1944.
The works are believed to have been looted that year from the family's mansion in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, according to the French Ministry of Culture, which helped trace the rightful owners.
Five members of the family were deported and murdered at the Auschwitz death camp, while others fought in the Resistance or went into hiding.
Their living beneficiaries were finally identified last year thanks to the efforts of researchers at the culture ministry, the French national archives and CIVS, the commission responsible for examining reparation claims from victims of France's antisemitic wartime laws.
The heirs handed the works over to the Louvre in a ceremony last Tuesday, attended by 48 of the Javals' descendants.
It is a "duty of memory towards my family, who were robbed and persecuted, whose history speaks to current generations", one of them, Marion, told French news agency AFP, asking to remain anonymous.
'Never forget'
The new display "testifies to a rich and interesting group of people" who had very different destinies, she said.
The museum's director, Laurence des Cars, told French news agency AFP it was a "call to never forget, a commitment to transmitting memory and a constant call to action".
The Javals' paintings are thought to have been among thousands of stolen artworks taken to Germany in the autumn of 1944.
Surviving family member Mathilde Javal officially asked for the paintings to be restituted when the war ended in 1945, but errors in the spelling of her name and address held up the process, according to the Louvre.
Her letter is now presented alongside the paintings.
Instead of being returned, the two still lifes ended up in the Louvre in the 1950s as part of the French state's collection of looted works whose rightful ownership is unclear.
Under the National Museum Recovery programme, thousands of them have been entrusted to national museums for safekeeping.
The government has also asked genealogy experts to help hunt down the living owners, though that initiative is limited to a small number of items.
Thousands of pieces stolen
Around 100,000 cultural objects were looted or sold under duress in France during the Nazi occupation of 1940-45, mainly from Jewish families. Many were transferred to Germany.
Around 60,000 works came back to France after the war, of which 45,000 were returned to their owners by a special commission that operated until 1949.
Of the remaining 15,000, around 13,000 were sold by the state and 2,200 entrusted to museums.
The Louvre holds 1,610 of the artworks, including 791 paintings.
(with AFP)
