The Art Market — $4m Manet goes to Japan
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Switzerland’s Kunstmuseum Bern, the unexpected beneficiary of the works of art found in the homes of Cornelius Gurlitt in 2012, has agreed the sale of a painting by Edouard Manet for $4m to the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo (NMWA). Gurlitt was the son of a Nazi-era dealer, Hildebrand Gurlitt, and the discovery of about 1,500 works of art was revealed to the public just before Cornelius died in 2014.
The Kunstmuseum is at pains to point out that Manet’s “Marine, temps d’orage” (1873) has been given the green light by the German government’s Gurlitt Provenance Research Project, meaning that it is neither Nazi-confiscated nor was bought under duress. The work had been owned by Japanese businessman Kojiro Matsukata (1865-1950), who lived in Europe in the early 20th century and bought the painting from Paul Rosenberg in 1922.
When Matsukata returned to Japan, he left hundreds of paintings in the care of a representative in France. Sometime between 1940 and 1942, this representative sold the Manet, which went via the Belgian dealer Raphaël Gérard (also known to deal in looted works) to Hildebrand Gurlitt in 1944. Matsukata’s remaining works were returned to Japan in 1959 and became the founding collection of the Tokyo museum. Earlier this year the painting came on loan to the NMWA as part of its 60th-anniversary celebrations.
That the Swiss museum is selling at all is a delicate issue, as its executives maintain that the institution does not want to derive any financial benefit from its problematic bequest. Nina Zimmer, director of the Kunstmuseum Bern, describes the Manet sale as “an exception” and, in a statement, her museum says the painting’s $4m valuation equates to the costs to date of handling the Gurlitt works, including mounting two exhibitions.
Any “possible surplus” will support ongoing provenance research: the Bern museum has until the end of 2022 to assess what can be accepted. So far, the project has given the green light to only 28 of about 1,000 works that needed research. Zimmer says that “under 20” have been confirmed as Nazi-looted, and restituted where possible.