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This page features works from the collection with a potentially problematic provenance.
The museum hopes that by making the provenance record of these works public, new information may come to light.
‘After the harvest’ by Pieter Aertsen was acquired by D.G. van Beuningen from the art dealer Lambert Jageneau in 1939. Correspondence shows that Jageneau inquired about the previous owners in Vienna with a person who remains unknown to date. It seems that the painting had previously been in the possession of a ‘Dr. Bruno Berall’ or ‘Dr. Bruno Beroll’.
Further research shows that a lawyer Dr. Bruno Beral (1888-1961) lived with his wife and daughter in Vienna. By law Beral was considered Jewish, and he left Vienna with his family in 1938. Via England they eventually settled in Australia, but their assets in Vienna were confiscated and sold in 1941. The Beral family attempted to retrieve their assets after the war, but it is unknown if these assets included an art collection. It is not clear if the ‘Dr. Bruno Berall’ or ‘Dr. Bruno Beroll’ identified by Jageneau as the previous owner of the painting is the same person as the Dr. Bruno Beral who fled Vienna in 1938.
This painting is also on the website Museum Acquisitions From 1933 Onwards.
In 2008 the Stichting tot Beheer Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Foundation received a letter written on behalf of the heirs of the German collector Prof. Dr Alfred Pringsheim (1850-1941), the owner of a celebrated collection of Italian maiolica, from which seven pieces were acquired by the collector J.N. Bastert in 1941 and that are now in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. The heirs asked the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Foundation, which was the owner of the objects, to return them. The museum responded by proposing that the question be jointly submitted for a binding opinion to the Advisory Committee on the Assessment for Items of Cultural Value and the Second World War (the Restitutions Committee). The museum is currently awaiting the heirs’ reply.
The Jewish collector Alfred Pringsheim was a highly respected professor of mathematics at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich. His collection of maiolica and silver and gilded objects earned international renown. In 1933, he and his wife Hedwig were forced to sell the ‘palace’ they had built on the Narcisstraße to the Nazi Deutscher Arbeitersverein. Because the collection constituted a considerable portion of his capital, Pringsheim attempted to sell it. From 1936 this became impossible: the maiolica collection was placed on the national heritage list, which prohibited its export.
The Pringsheims’ passports were seized in 1937, preventing them from fleeing Germany, and on 21 November 1938, much of their collection was confiscated by the Gestapo. The couple was finally granted permission to auction the collection abroad, provided various pieces and two silver beakers by Ludwig Krug were ‘donated’ to the state. The sale took place in June and July 1939 at Sotheby’s in London. A large portion of the disappointing proceeds had to be paid to the German state, with Alfred and Hedwig Pringsheim using the remainder to immigrate to Switzerland, where they died in exile. After the Second World War, the proceeds of the auction were repaid in full and the objects confiscated by the Nazis (precious metal and other objects) were returned to the Pringsheims’ heirs.
These seven maiolica objects entered the museum’s collection through the purchase of the collection of Jaap Bastert (1891-1876) and Iet van Schaardenburg (1894-1985). The couple had acquired the pieces in 1939 via Hein Hamer at the auction of the Pringsheims’ collection in London.
These objects are also on the website Museum Acquisitions From 1933 Onwards.
‘Street Scene’, painted by Honoré Daumier, was sold to D.G. van Beuningen by the art dealer Jacques Goudstikker in June 1939. It entered the collection of the museum in 1958 with the acquisition of the art collection from the estate of D.G. van Beuningen. It is not known from whom and when Goudstikker acquired the painting. It was in the collection of the German Jewish businessman and art collector Otto Blumenfeld from 1926 until a currently unknown date after 1930. Blumenfeld fled from Hamburg to the United Kingdom in 1938, where he died in 1975. It is not known when or under which circumstances 'Street Scene' left his collection.
This painting is also on the website Museum Acquisitions From 1933 Onwards.
This oil sketch was sold as part of an estate sale under the title ‘Der thronende St. Marcus’ (Saint Mark Enthroned), then attributed to Van Dyck, at the Mandelbaum & Kronthal auction house in Berlin in 1936. The sale featured the contents of Bleibtreustraße 17 in Charlottenburg, Berlin. It is currently not known who lived at this address at the time (except that there lived a doctor and collector) or under what circumstances the auction took place. The work then entered the collection of the German Jewish art historian and writer Lothar Brieger-Wasservogel, who probably purchased it at or shortly after the aforementioned auction. Brieger fled Berlin for Shanghai in 1938. He returned to Berlin in 1947 to assume an academic position and died there in 1949. It is not known under which circumstances the painting left Brieger’s possession. The sketch was auctioned in Paris in 1955, but it is not known who the consignor was. It was again sold at auction in Paris in 1968, after which it was acquired by the London-based art dealer P. & D. Colnaghi, who sold it to the museum in 1969.
This oil sketch is also on the website Museum Acquisitions From 1933 Onwards.
In 1936, ’The Lamentation of Christ’ by Hans Memling was owned by Arthur Goldschmidt, a Jewish art dealer who had fled from Germany. His name is linked to Karl Haberstock and Hans Wendland, who are known to have bought and sold stolen art. Goldschmidt settled in Paris in 1936 at Place Vendôme with Paul Graupe, another German art dealer. When the Germans occupied Paris in 1940, their collection was impounded and Goldschmidt was imprisoned. Upon his release six months later, he fled via Spain to Havana, Cuba, where he re-established himself as an art dealer. It is not known when and from whom Goldschmidt acquired the painting. In any case, in 1917 it was in the possession of Richard von Kaufmann in Berlin. Goldschmidt sold the painting in 1936 to D.G. van Beuningen. It entered the museum as part of his collection in 1958.
This painting is also on the website Museum Acquisitions From 1933 Onwards.
The painting ‘The Virgin with the Infant Christ Holding an Apple’ by the Master of the Magdalen Legend was auctioned by Galleria Scopinich in Milan on 21 November 1932 (no. 136, as Rogier van der Weyden). In 1937, the work was in the possession of Dr Hans Wendland, a German art dealer who is known to have bought and sold stolen art during the war. He was a prominent figure in transactions between Germany, France and Switzerland. The painting was in the possession of D.G. van Beuningen from 1938 and entered the museum as part of his collection in 1958. It is not known who purchased the painting at the sale at Galleria Scopinich in Milan in 1932. Neither is it known when and from whom Dr Wendland acquired the work and how Van Beuningen acquired it.
This painting is also on the website Museum Acquisitions From 1933 Onwards.
