Resolved Objects

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.

Paul Gauguin, Street Scene in Tahiti, 1891

Street Scene in Tahiti by Paul Gauguin is a colorful, engrossing picture depicting a small hut along a narrow path in Tahiti. A young girl sits cross-legged on the porch of the hut, her head supported by her hand, a mule standing behind her. Two figures walk down the path which cuts through the center of the piece and leads the viewer’s eye through the painting before vanishing into the lush tropical foliage. The work exudes a heat and mystery like that of the land it depicts.

The work has hung on the wall of the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio since 1939 when the museum first purchased the painting. In 2004, the Toledo Museum of Art was notified of a restitution claim filed by the heirs of Mrs. Martha Nathan for the painting.

Martha Nathan was a member of the Dreyfus family, a well known and wealthy Jewish family of bankers and she lived in Germany in the years leading up to World War II. Mrs. Nathan inherited her husband’s art collection in 1922, including Street Scene in Tahiti. When the situation for Jews in Germany began to worsen, Mrs. Nathan sensed that dreadful danger was imminent. In February 1937, Mrs. Nathan managed to escape to France. Although she was able to take some of her works of art with her, including the Gauguin, other pieces were not permitted to leave with her due to their designation as works of 'national value.'

In Paris, Mrs. Nathan contacted several Jewish art dealers to establish the value of her Gauguin. George Wildenstein, one of the Paris dealers, agreed to buy the work for the equivalent of $6,865 (today the piece is worth between 10 and 15 million dollars). Mr. Wildenstein resold Street Scene in Tahiti to the Toledo Museum of Art in 1939 for $25,000.

After a year and a half of provenance research, the Toledo Museum of Art concluded that they were indeed the rightful owners of the Gauguin due to the fact that the piece was voluntarily sold outside of Germany between willing individuals for a fair market price. The sale neither occurred under pressure from the Nazi regime nor did the proceeds go to benefiting this regime. Furthermore, after the war Martha Nathan actively pursued the return of several of pieces from her collection, but did not seek to recover the Gauguin.

In 2005, the Toledo museum notified Mrs. Nathan’s heirs of their findings, but the heirs continued to assert their claim to rightful ownership. In January of 2006, the museum appealed to a US court to affirm their rightful ownership of the painting, which was again met by the heir’s counter claim.

The District Court of the state of Ohio ruled that in accordance with the museum’s findings, Street Scene in Tahiti did in fact belong to the Toledo Museum of Art. In May of 2007, Martha Nathan’s heirs dropped their claim to ownership of the work and the Gauguin remains a part of the Toledo Museum of Art’s permanent collection.

Paul Gauguin, Street Scene in Tahiti

Vincent Van Gogh, View of Asylum and Chapel at Saint Remy