The Kunstmuseum Bern Is Selling a Stormy Manet Seascape Previously Owned by the Infamous Collector Cornelius Gurlitt for $4 Million

In an unprecedented move, the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland,
which holds the vast former collection of Cornelius Gurlitt, the
reclusive son of the Nazi art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, has agreed
to sell a work from the infamous estate.

The work, Manet’s Marine, Temps d’orage (1873), is
being sold to the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo for $4
million. It is the first work the Swiss museum is deaccessioning
from the vast collection of 1,500 objects, which Gurlitt donated
upon his death in 2014.

“Obviously, letting go of a work is one of the toughest
decisions to make, so we cannot say we are exactly happy about it,”
Nina Zimmer, the director of the Kunstmuseum Bern, tells Artnet
News. “But we have incurred a lot of expenses dealing with the
Gurlitt estate, which is tough to bear as a small museum.”

Although at least nine of the artworks in the extraordinary
collection, which includes examples by Edvard Munch, Henri Matisse,
and Paul Cézanne, were either seized from their rightful Jewish
owners or acquired under duress, the Manet has been classified by
researchers as “green,” meaning it is “proven or highly likely not
to be Nazi-looted art.”

The $4 million sum came from an independent appraisal of the
work, and will cover the expected deficit resulting from the
museum’s acceptance of the controversial estate. It factors in
provenance research carried out in collaboration with the German
Lost Art Foundation; restoration work; legal costs; and the
organization of two exhibitions exploring the legacy of the Gurlitt
collection. Zimmer says that if the final sum of those costs ends
up being lower than $4 million, the museum will donate the surplus
to fund further provenance research.

The work was chosen in part because it is one of the few with a
relatively clear provenance, and also because it was once owned by
Japanese industrialist Kōjirō Matsukata, whose collection of
Western art formed the basis of the Tokyo museum’s collection.

“Under the circumstances, I think it was one of the best
solutions we could find,” Zimmer says.

“Shreds of Doubt”

In a statement, Kunstmuseum Bern board member Marcel Brülhart
said the museum accepted the Gurlitt collection with the
responsibility to clarify its provenance and to restitute any
looted art. “The board of the museum has always made clear that it
does not want to profit financially from the inheritance,” Brülhart
said. “However, the museum cannot bear any substantial deficit from
the Gurlitt project.”

“I’m glad the board took the decision to accept the estate,”
Zimmer says. “The Gurlitt case changed the climate and discussion
of provenance research in Switzerland forever. Do I sometimes feel
overwhelmed by the task? Of course. But we are making strides.”

Matsukata, the Japanese industrialist, built his collection when
he was living in Europe in the first half of the 20th century. But
after the Nazis invaded France, he returned to Japan, entrusting
some of his paintings with a retired Japanese navy officer who
ended up selling 20 of them, including the Manet, at some
point between 1940 and 1942 to raise money to maintain the rest of
the collection. Somewhere along the way, the Manet ended up in the
hands of Hildebrand Gurlitt, but the Gurlitt Provenance Research
Project has determined that it was most likely not Nazi-confiscated
property.

Still, it remains unclear how many hands the painting passed
through before it came to the collection of Hildebrand Gurlitt,
meaning that “shreds of doubt” linger as to its exact provenance.
“This is how provenance research today functions,” Zimmer says. “We
work with likelihoods, because new research can always surprise
you.”

Although the museum is satisfied with the painting’s “green”
status, Zimmer says that if any evidence emerges that the work was
stolen, the Japanese museum will be refunded and the work will be
restituted to its rightful heirs.

Since the Gurlitt collection came to the Kunstmuseum Bern, six
of the nine works identified as looted or sold under duress have
been restituted. Several of those have gone to the market and
fetched considerable prices, including Max Liebermann’s Two
Riders on the Beach (1901), which sold at Sotheby’s London for
nearly £1.9 million ($2.9 million) with premium in 2015, more than
three times its high estimate.

The post The Kunstmuseum Bern Is Selling a Stormy Manet
Seascape Previously Owned by the Infamous Collector Cornelius
Gurlitt for $4 Million appeared first on artnet
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