[MSN] Art looted by Nazis handed back to Czech family

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Art looted by Nazis handed back to Czech family

Jeevan Vasagar
Thursday January 25, 2007
The Guardian

The family of a Czech lawyer who was tortured by the Nazis will get back three drawings seized by the Gestapo in 1939 which are now at the Courtauld Institute in London.

The three old master drawings were included in a lot sold at Sotheby's in 1946 and are now valued at between £8,700 and £12,000. It is not known how they came to Britain. According to Sotheby's they were consigned on behalf of an anonymous collector by a firm of solicitors in the Channel Islands which no longer exists.

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The drawings, A Lion, attributed to Carl Ruthart (1630-1703), A Dog Lying Down, attributed to Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635-81), and An Architectural Capriccio, attributed to Giuseppe Bibiena (1696-1756), were bequeathed to the Courtauld in 1952. The institute did not know they were stolen.

The Nazis looted the drawings from Dr Arthur Feldmann's villa in Brno on the day Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939. Dr Feldmann and his wife were forced to leave with just a suitcase. The prominent Jewish lawyer was later arrested and tortured. He died in 1941.

Dr Feldmann's family have kept two of the drawings and presented the one attributed to Van Mieris to the Courtauld.

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