Avant le départ

inscr. b. l.: Degas

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Lemoisne 503

2021

Paul Rosenberg (1881–1959) was one of the most important gallerists of the 20th century. He promoted young artists such as Pablo Picasso, Marie Laurencin, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger and Henri Matisse. In 1908, he opened a gallery in Paris. Rosenberg’s influence extended across the Atlantic. He maintained close ties with figures including Alfred H. Barr, Director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Rosenberg was of Jewish origin, and in 1940 he fled Paris to escape the life-threatening Nazi persecution and went to New York, where he managed to establish his art gallery anew. Until his death, he continued brokering works to collectors in Europe as well, including Emil Bührle. Rosenberg had inherited the painting Before the Start by Edgar Degas in 1924, and acquired A Girl Reading by Camille Corot in 1939. In 1941, the ‘Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (ERR)’, an organisation set up by the Nazi party to loot cultural property and led by NSDAP ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, seized the holdings from Rosenberg’s gallery that had remained in Europe. The works were swapped for others from the gallery of Theodor Fischer in Lucerne, from whom Bührle acquired them in 1942. Paul Rosenberg submitted a claim to the Chamber on Looted Assets of the Swiss Supreme Court after 1945, and won his case. Bührle returned the paintings in 1948. A few weeks later, he reached an agreement with Rosenberg to repurchase the Corot, and the following year he was able to reacquire the Degas as well. In 1951, in a recovery suit, he claimed back from Fischer the price he had paid when first acquiring the works. The Federal Court accepted the claim. They decided that the purchase had been made by Bührle in good faith and that at the time of the purchase, he could not have known of the works’ unlawful provenance. The verdict remains controversial to this day, as Bührle may very well have known about the systematic looting of the Jewish collectors in 1942. State of research 31.12.2021 Do you have questions, criticism, suggestions, and further information? Please send us a message to provenienzforschung(at)kunsthaus.ch.

- Die Sammlung Emil Bührle. Geschichte, Gesamtkatalog und 70 Meisterwerke, hrsg. vom Schweizerischen Institut für Kunstwissenschaft (SIK-ISEA), München: Hirmer, 2021, No. 172, S. 260/264 (ill.). - Sammlung Emil G. Bührle. Festschrift zu Ehren von Emil G. Bührle zur Eröffnung des Kunsthaus-Neubaus und Katalog der Sammlung Emil G. Bührle, hrsg. von Kunsthaus Zürich, Sammlungskatalog Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, 1958, No. 159, S. 105 (ill.).