Brueghel return

Every artwork reclaimed by the Max Stern Estate provides the occasion to celebrate justice served. The afternoon of November 17 was the latest such occasion. On that day, the government of the Netherlands handed over an Old Master painting to representatives of the Stern Estate (made up of Concordia and McGill Universities and the Hebrew University/Jerusalem).

President and Vice-Chancellor Judith Woodsworth travelled with Clarence Epstein, Concordia Director of Special Projects and Cultural Affairs, to The Hague to reclaim the painting, Allegory of Earth and Water by Jan Brueghel the Younger during a ceremony hosted by the government of the Netherlands. The painting is remarkable for the complexity of its imagery. But the return of the painting is also remarkable for a number of reasons.

The Brueghel is the eighth painting to be returned to the Stern Estate. There are estimated to be a total of 400 artworks forced by the Nazis from the hands of the Jewish collector and dealer in the years surrounding World War II. But this is the first time a European government has surrendered a work from its national collection to the Stern heirs.

Woodsworth expressed her gratitude to the Dutch government, saying “It is our hope that other European countries will follow the lead of the Netherlands and return some of the hundreds of artworks seized from Dr. Stern, some of which are currently hanging in other European museums.”

As Epstein sees it, “There are legal obligations, and there are moral obligations. When it comes to the moral obligations, we are counting on the good faith of the other parties who are in possession of these paintings to understand that this is not a simple issue; that there is not necessarily a legal end to the issue that we want to pursue.”

There was no litigation involved in the return of the Brueghel painting. Instead, it was removed from the Noordbrabants Museum in Den Bosch after its origins were verified by the Netherlands’ Origins Unknown agency – the organization responsible for investigating the provenance of certain paintings in the Dutch national collections.

In his work with the Max Stern Art Restititution Project on behalf of the three universities that are heirs to the Stern Estate, Epstein liaises with a complex web of organizations. It includes representatives of the Holocaust Claims Processing Office of the New York State Banking Department, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and INTERPOL.

As Epstein winds up a recent interview with this journalist, he quickly checks his emails. There, he discovers the latest bit of good news that propels the reclamation project onward: Evidence that he and his associates may soon be caught up in arrangements for the return of yet another looted artwork; one that has required six long years of work to track.

Listen to an interview with Clarence Epstein: