Cases Pending

Each object tells a story. Some are still missing, some are restituted or resolved, and some have cases still pending. The circumstances of looting and the efforts for recovery are just as fascinating as the famous works of art themselves.

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Cupid complaining to Venus, circa 1525

Cranach’s allegorical painting depicts Cupid complaining to Venus after being stung by bees when he stole a honeycomb. The painting has a description on it which loosely states that life is a mixture of pleasure and pain. The same can be said for the history of this object.

This masterpiece by Cranach is currently housed in the National Gallery in London, but the rightful owner is unknown. The National Gallery acquired the painting in 1963 from New York dealers E & A Silberman for £34,000. Prior to the acquisition by E & A Silberman, it belonged to Mrs. Patricia Lochridge Hartwell.

Ms. Lochridge (her maiden name) was a war correspondent who wrote for the American magazine Women’s Home Companion. In the August 1945, she published an article describing how she acted as governor for a day for the US government in Berechtesgaden, a small Alpine village where Hitler had a retreat. Her duties included ordering Germans citizens to grow vegetables, requisitioning food supplies for displaced residents, and issuing a proclamation requiring Nazi insignia to be removed from the village.

One of Lochridge’s duties was to deal with Goering’s art collection. The Allied Fine Arts and Monuments officers had over 1300 artworks removed from Goering’s collection and put in wooden buildings so that they could be catalogued and repaired. Because there was fear of a fire, Ms Lochridge ordered that the fireman be dispatched to the site and remain on duty around the clock. The storage facilities were located at Unterstein, which is 4km from Berchtesgaden.

Mrs. Lochridge Hartwell died in 1998, but according to her son, Jay Hartwell: "The painting was in a warehouse of art in southern Germany that was controlled by American armed forces after the defeat of Adolf Hitler. My mother was told she could go into the warehouse and pick out whichever piece she wanted. She then smuggled the painting into the United States."

It is unclear as to who the pre-war owner of the Cranach painting is and since Goring looted art from all over Europe, it is difficult to track down exactly where it came from. The picture belonged to a collector from Frankfurt name Emil Goldschmidt, who then auctioned it through Rudolph Lepke in Berlin in 1909 to an unknown buyer. The National Gallery has done extensive research, but has been unable to identify the rightful owner. It could be that the original owners perished in the Holocaust and their heirs do not know about the Cranach. The painting currently remains in the National Gallery in London.