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.

Emil Nolde, May Meadow, 1915

May Meadow by Emil Nolde was painted in 1915. The vibrantly coloured oil painting depicts a swathe of long grass within which, in the middle distance, three figures wander. The figures are painted loosely but appear to be a nurse or mother with two children. The loose, Expressionistic style extends to the surrounding grass and yellow flowers and this lends a wonderful sense of breezy movement to the scene.

May Meadow was painted in the last spring Nolde spent in his countryside residence in Alsen. He sold this property in 1916 to move back to his native Schleswig, on the Danish-German border. While living in Aslen, he had a routine of spending winters in Berlin mostly producing drawings and the rest of the year spent in the countryside, painting and developing his Expressionistic style.

This painting was bought by Otto Seigfried Julius, a major patron of Nolde’s Expressionist ‘Die Brucke’ group. Mr. Julius was a Jewish physician who left Hamburg in the late-1930s, with the riser of Hitler’s regime for Switzerland. He sent for his belongings and it was during the move in 1939, that the painting disappeared. The fate of the work is murky after this date until 1953, when it resurfaced in Austria.

The painting was bought in 1953 by the city council of Linz in northern Austria and is currently in one of the city’s museums. There is some dispute over the circumstances of the sale, such as whether the council knew that the dealer in Salzburg they were buying the painting from had a reputation for selling Nazi looted art.

A restitution claim was made in 2005 by a Viennese lawyer, Alfred Noll, acting on behalf of heirs of Otto Julius, who are living in Britain. The discussions with Linz council began in private, but in 2007 Noll decided to make the case of May Meadow (along with an unfinished painting of Ria Munk by Gustav Klimt) public to kick-start action from the council. The council maintains it is not ‘forcefully defending’ the painting but is doing everything in its power to determine the exact provenance; namely whether there was ever a legal change of ownership after the war.

An arbitration court has solved recent restitution cases in Austria but it remains to be seen how this case will be resolved. For now, the ownership of the work remains in dispute and the case has become even more complicated since its entrance into the public realm.