SEATTLE A three-year case involving an Henri Matisse painting looted by Nazis during World War II has been settled between the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) and New York's Oldest Art Gallery, the museum said Friday.
According to an AFP report, last year the museum returned the 1928 Matisse painting, "Odalisque," valued at two million dollars, to the heirs of French art dealer Paul Rosenberg, after its investigation confirmed their claims that the painting had been stolen by the Nazis during World War II.
The painting was bequeathed to the Seattle Museum by the late Timber Baron Prentice Bloedel in the early 1990s. They bought it from a New York gallery for $18,000 in 1954 and kept it at their country estate near Seattle.
Elaine Rosenberg, widow of Paul Rosenberg's son, Alexandre, and Rosenberg's daughter Michele Nanette Sinclair hired an attorney in 1997 and art experts to track the provenance of the painting.
The museum sued the gallery that same year, alleging that the gallery knowingly sold a painting stolen by the Nazis.
Under the agreement, the museum can select "one or more" works of art from Knoedler's holdings. If the museum isn't satisfied with any of the art works offered, it can insist on a financial reimbursement.
"In that case," SAM director Mimi Gates told AFP, "we will use the money to buy a "significant addition to the museum's collection." Gates wouldn't say how much the settlement was worth.
"But we're being reimbursed for legal fees, research and travel costs as well as the loss of the painting," she said.
In exchange, the museum will withdraw accusations of fraud and negligent misrepresentation.
The case may have far-reaching effects: Museums around the world are struggling with the sources of gifted works. It's unknown how many more stolen paintings are hanging on the walls of prestigious institutions.
Proving "Odalisque" was wartime plunder was made easier because the Nazis, with their keen appetite for organization and record-keeping, carefully inventoried the art they stole.