Ukrainians demand return of art looted by Nazis - OttawaCitizen-25Aug99
Stefan Lemieszewski
25Aug99
Ukrainians demand return of art looted by Nazis
National Gallery drawing among disputed works
Jim Bronskill
The Ottawa Citizen
The Ukrainian government plans to knock on
the doors of the National Gallery of Canada
to request the return of a treasured drawing
looted by the Nazis during the Second World War.
The gallery is home to Nude Woman with a
Staff, one of two dozen drawings by German
artist Albrecht Durer that Ukrainian officials
say rightly belong in their country.
However, gallery officials maintain the early
16th-century work was acquired in good faith
and has never been the subject of a formal
claim.
Nude Woman, which dates from between
1500 and 1508, belonged to a collection of
24 pieces by the German master that once
graced a museum in what is now Lviv,
Ukraine. The drawings, known as the
Lubomirski Durers, are currently scattered
across Europe and North America.
The case is a prime example of the lingering
concerns about true ownership of artwork
confiscated during the Nazi era.
Ukrainian cultural institutions lost thousands of
pieces of art, as well as millions of books
and archival documents, during the chaos of
the war.
A government body, the National
Commission on the Restitution of Cultural
Treasures to Ukraine, is actively investigating
the disappearance of many important items.
The Ukrainian commission is attempting to locate all of the Lubomirski
Durers
"in order to determine their future fate," said Taras Malyshevskyi,
press
secretary at the Ukrainian embassy in Ottawa.
Ukrainian officials have already approached government ministries in
the
Netherlands and Britain about the return of pieces in the collection,
said
Laryssa Krushel'nytska, director of Lviv's Stefanyk Scientific Library,
a
successor to the original museum that housed the Durers.
"We haven't contacted anyone in Canada concerning Durer's drawing at
the
National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, but we plan to do it," said Ms.
Krushel'nytska.
The U.S. Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets is also
studying the Lubomirski case because the Americans played a role in
deciding the collection's ownership after the war.
The roots of the case stretch back to the early 19th century when Prince
Henry Lubomirksi, a Polish nobleman, established a museum for his private
collection.
Adolf Hitler, who considered Durer a German genius, ordered the drawings
seized during the war. They hung in Hitler's field headquarters during
fierce
battles with the Soviet army.
Toward the end of the war, they were hidden in an Austrian salt mine.
American soldiers discovered the Durers amid a dazzling trove of other
looted art.
According to National Gallery of Canada records, at the end of the war,
the
U.S. military tribunal assigned to repatriate looted art decided in
favour of the
claim made by the legal heir of the Lubomirski family, Prince George
Lubomirski, to ownership of the drawings.
Prince George then sold most of the drawings, including Nude Woman with
a
Staff, to London dealer P&D Colnaghi Ltd. The remaining ones were
sold
elsewhere.
In 1956, a Toronto businessman and his associates bought Nude Woman
for
$18,000 and donated it to the National Gallery of Canada.
The piece and an outline of its provenance were published in the 1964
The gallery accepted the Durer drawing "in all good faith," chief curator
Colin
Bailey said in an interview.
Questions about Prince George's entitlement to the work were not raised
at
the time, said Mr. Bailey. "This was not an issue that we knew about,
when we
acquired it, that was anywhere questioned."
The London-based Art Newspaper recently reported that declassified U.S.
documents from the 1940s reveal authorities were reluctant to hand
over the
drawings to Prince George, fearing an international legal tangle.
The U.S. presidential advisory commission is looking at the Lubomirski
case
in terms of how "the United States government approached restitution
of
cultural property," said commission spokesman Stuart Loeser.
The Washington-based body, examining Holocaust-era issues concerning
gold, other financial instruments and cultural property, is not expected
to
report before late next year. "We want to do this carefully and accurately,"
said Mr. Loeser.
Ukraine is monitoring the U.S. research effort with interest.
Whatever the outcome, Ukrainian officials argue that Henry Lubomirski
intended the works to remain in Lviv. "Lubomirski envisaged that any
works,
once granted to the library, were supposed to be part and parcel of
it and
were to become its property for good."
Complicating the matter is that Poland has also shown an interest in
the
Lubomirski Durers.
In early 1998, the National Gallery of Canada reviewed its holdings
and
"nothing in the collection that had any history of a claim against
its title," said
Mr. Bailey.
In light of recent concerns about the ownership of once-looted pieces,
the
gallery is more attuned to such matters, he added.
"We've become a little bit more careful and questioning when it comes
to the
20th-century history of works of art. We're not claiming infallibility.
But I think
we can make a very good case of showing due diligence at every stage."
Mr. Bailey said determining the history of artworks is similar to an
archeological dig in that crucial bits of information -- like pieces
of an ancient
vase -- often cannot be found.
"It's not as if somewhere there is history for all these works in a
computer and
all you really need to do is plug into the computer and there it is,"
he said. "It
isn't as scientific and as clear-cut as one would like it to be."