The Olive Harvest (La cueillette des Olives) by Vincent van Gogh is one of those outstanding works that is on display on the ground floor of the Vassilis and Eliza Goulandris Foundation Museum and is very easy to find in the online collection explorer. because it occupies a prominent position.

This painting, which the artist created in 1889 – the period when he was imprisoned in the psychiatric hospital of Saint-Remy, near Arles – expresses all his love for nature, which he discovered while walking around the asylum. At the end of 1889, Van Gogh managed to spend hours outside in olive groves, until in early December he managed to capture three women at sunset.

However, this particular work is now at the center of a lawsuit challenging both its legal purchase and ownership, originally by the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Vassilis and Eliza Goulandris Foundation.

Specifically, in a lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court in Oakland, nine plaintiffs who claim to be the heirs of Hedwig Stern allege that the German-Jewish collector was forced to leave Munich for Berkeley, California, along with her husband. and children to escape Nazi persecution during World War II by losing all their possessions.

Nine heirs of a German Jewish collector claim the painting was stolen by the Nazis.

They believe the valuable painting, confiscated by the Nazis, ended up in the US Museum in 1957 and then sold without their knowledge in 1972 in a secret deal. Since then, they claim, the work has been in the hands of the Greeks, in the private collection of Goulandris, and is now on public display. The lawsuit states that the Goulandris Foundation continues to keep the painting in its collection, despite its dubious provenance.

“The Vassilis and Elizas Goulandris Foundation has not yet officially received information about the lawsuit, so we cannot take a position on this issue,” was the statement received by “K” on behalf of the Foundation in response to our question on this matter. . In the details of the origin of the work, presented on the museum’s website, it is indicated that the painting was originally in Amsterdam in the possession of the artist’s family, then in Paris in the collection of the art dealer Ambrosios Vollard, and then in Munich, originally as the property of Dr. Alfred Wolff (1912 and 1924) and Justin Tannhäuser until about 1948.

However, the plaintiffs in the 13-page lawsuit allege that when Stern fled Germany in December 1936, the Gestapo forbade her from taking the art from her collection. Her former lawyer, Kurt Mosbacher, was appointed administrator to liquidate her estate in April 1938, selling a particular work and a Renoir painting to the German collector Theodor Werner through the Tannhäuser Gallery, originally owned by a Jewish owner of the same name, and then given to “ario” Paul Remer. In January 1939, the Gestapo confiscated all the property of Fritz and Hedwig Stern. In 1955, Werner returned another work from his collection to its rightful owner, but not Van Gogh or Renoir.

The Olive Harvest eventually arrived in New York, and in 1956 the Met purchased the painting from collector Vincent Astor. Plaintiffs contend that the museum’s then chief curator and deputy director, Theodore Russo, “knew or knowingly ignored” the issues of its origins, having been an expert on the subject as a member of Monuments to Men and Women, a group of American and British curators. , art historians and other experts who tried to find works of art looted by the Nazis during and after World War II. However, he authorized its sale. The Met told the American press that “the sale met the museum’s strict criteria for disposal of the painting—in particular, it was recorded that the work was considered to be of lower quality than other works of the same type in the collection.”

The painting is valued at approximately $75,000 and they are seeking its return and damages, the plaintiffs said. They report that attempts to restore it have so far been unsuccessful. It should be noted that Stern, who died in 1983, tried for many years to return her stolen collection.