[MSN] Foundation recovers painting stolen by Nazis

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Foundation recovers painting stolen by Nazis
 TheStar.com 

February 27, 2007 
Canadian Press

MONTREAL - A portrait by Renaissance artist Nicolas Neufchatel is the latest
victory for a Canadian foundation trying to track down artworks looted by
the Nazis.

Portrait of Jan van Eversdyck, by Flemish-born Neufchatel, has been
recovered by the Max Stern Art Restitution Project, based in Montreal.

Stern, who was Jewish, operated an art gallery in Dusseldorf from 1913 to
1934, when he was forced to sell his holdings to benefit the Third Reich.

Stern fled Germany in 1937 and eventually moved to Montreal, where he and
his wife owned the Dominion Gallery.

When he died in 1987, Stern named Concordia, McGill University and Hebrew
University of Jerusalem the beneficiaries of his estate.

Since then, executors have been trying to track down hundreds of pieces of
art.

A Concordia University professor located the Neufchatel in the collection of
the Yannick and Ben Jakober Foundation of Mallorca, Spain.

When the foundation was contacted by the Holocaust Claims Processing Office
in New York, plans were made for its prompt return.

"We are delighted by the sensitivity and unequivocal co-operation of the
Jakober family and their Foundation team in our cause. They have truly risen
to the occasion," Robert Vineberg, executor of the Stern estate, said in a
statement on Tuesday.

The painting will remain in the Jakober Foundation collection, on permanent
loan from the Stern estate. 

Stern's collection included works by such masters as Jan Brueghel, Lodovico
Carracci and Franz Xavier Winterhalter.

Last October the restitution project recovered its first piece of artwork:
Aimee, An Egyptian Girl, by French artist Emile Lecomte-Vernet. That
painting now hangs in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

About 40 works of art have been located and negotiations are ongoing with
private collectors, galleries and government institutions around the world
to recover these works.

The foundation is suing a German baroness after one of the paintings it
wants was spirited out of the United States and back to Germany. 

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