[MSN] A picture in the U.K. National Maritime Museum was almost certainly looted by British troops from a German naval academy on the Baltic in 1945, Martin Bailey of the Art Newspaper has discovered. This raises an interesting question.

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Please May We Have Our Swastika Picture Back? Martin Gayford

By Martin Gayford

Jan. 17 (Bloomberg) -- A picture in the U.K. National Maritime Museum was
almost certainly looted by British troops from a German naval academy on the
Baltic in 1945, Martin Bailey of the Art Newspaper has discovered. This
raises an interesting question.

The painting, by an artist called Claus Bergen, isn't much more than a piece
of propaganda. It shows a swastika floating in the waters of the North Sea
in memory of the German dead in the Battle of Jutland. That combat at sea
took place in 1916, years before the Nazi party was even formed, let alone
came to power.

Murwik Naval Academy, when informed about the picture, expressed a tentative
interest in getting it back. According to a statement of principles by
British National Museum Directors on spoliation, probably they should. This
document ``recognizes and deplores the wrongful taking of works of art'' in
World War II.

(The National Maritime Museum issued an e-mailed statement Jan. 15 saying it
is still researching the provenance of the painting and the documentation is
``incomplete.'')

If the Claus Bergen has been looted, it ought to be returned. This prompts
the question: how far do you go with restitution? In recent years, we've
become familiar with claims for return of items stolen from Jewish
collectors under the Third Reich. Given the scale of Nazi criminality, these
claims seem entirely just.

The most spectacular result so far of such legal cases has been the
extraction of five paintings by Klimt from the Austrian national collection.
One of these, a portrait of Adele Bloch- Bauer, was briefly the most
expensive work of art ever to change hands when it sold for $135 million
last year.

The Nazis weren't the only ones who looted art. The answer to the question
of how many of the world's great works were wrongfully taken from their
original owners is a lot more than you might think.

Hermitage View

Some years ago, I discussed the question of restitution with Mikhail
Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. I asked him
about the works -- including four Van Goghs, six Cezannes and a great Degas
-- looted from German museums at the end of the war and retained by the
Hermitage.

His answer, in part, was that this was a can of worms that museums would be
unwise to open. (The other part was that German armies had caused such
destruction in Russia, punishment was deserved.) To illustrate his first
point, he told a story.

In 1918, the Bolshevik government made a separate peace with Germany and
Austria at Brest-Litovsk. Among the demands that the German negotiators
brought to the table was the return of some pictures from the Hermitage.
These, among them four Claudes and Rembrandt's ``Descent From the Cross,''
had been looted from the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel by a French general in
1806.

They were bought by the Empress Josephine and subsequently by the tsar. One
hundred and twelve years after they went missing, the people in Kassel
wanted them back. They probably still do. As it turned out, the Germans
didn't get the Rembrandt, though they did temporarily extract Estonia and
Latvia.

Full of Loot

Piotrovsky's moral was that great museums are full of loot. He's right. To
take another example, closer to home, Murillo painted six large pictures in
1668 for the Hospital de la Caridad in Seville. One, ``The Return of the
Prodigal Son,'' is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Another,
``The Healing of the Paralytic,'' is in the National Gallery, London.

Two, as the National Gallery's Web site tactfully explains, are still in the
church in Seville. What the Web site doesn't add is that the other four,
including the London and Washington pictures, were stolen, or ``wrongfully
taken,'' by the Napoleonic commander Marechal Soult in 1810. Should they go
back?

Then there is the matter of modern and impressionist pictures -- warehouses
full of Picassos, Matisses, and Gauguins -- seized from private collections
after the Russian Revolution.

How you describe this process -- expropriation, nationalization, theft --
depends on who you are and what your politics are. The Louvre has pictures,
Veronese's ``Marriage at Cana,'' for instance, looted during the Napoleonic
wars and not returned on the grounds they were too big to transport.

The list goes on and this can is already open. As far as that Claus Bergen
of the floating swastika is concerned, if officials at the Murwik Naval
Academy really want it, they're welcome. It's horrible.

(Martin Gayford is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are
his own.)

To contact the writer of this story: Martin Gayford at
martin at cgayford.freeserve.co.uk .