Proceeds of Monet Artwork on Auction Will Go to Heirs of Painting’s Original German Jewish Owner
by Shiryn Ghermezian
A partial view of Claude Monet’s “La Mare, effet de neige.” Photo: Christies.
A landscape painting by Impressionist painter Claude Monet that its original Jewish owner was forced to sell before he fled Nazi Germany will be auctioned next month, with a portion of the proceeds of the sale going to the heirs of the original owner, ARTnews reported.
Monet’s “La Mare, effet de neige” (1874-75), will be sold at Christie’s in New York on May 12. A legal settlement organized by Christie’s restitution department states that proceeds from the sale will be divided between the descendants of the work’s original owner, Richard Semmel, and a French family who are the painting’s current owners. The artwork is expected to be sold for $18-$25 million.
The owner of a textile factory in Germany who had a vast art collection, Semmel purchased the Monet painting from a German dealer in 1898. The artwork was previously exhibited at the “The First Impressionist Exhibition” in 1874.
Semmel was targeted by the Nazis for being Jewish, wealthy and a member of the German Democratic Party. Before he fled Germany to the Netherlands in 1933, he auctioned hundreds of pieces from his art collection. “La Mare, effet de neige” remained unsold and later came into the possession of French art collector Philip Leary, and eventually his descendants, who are the painting’s current owners, according to ARTnews.
Semmel fled the Netherlands in 1939 before the Nazis invaded the country and arrived in New York in 1941, where he lived until he died in 1950. His only heir was his friend and caretaker Grete Gross-Eisenstädt, who died in 1958. Her descendants were informed about the painting in March, after Christie’s restitution department reviewed the artwork, and a settlement was finalized in one day.
Anika Guntrum, Christie’s international director of 20th- and 21st-century art, told ARTnews that Monet’s painting is “an important art historical document.”
“In terms of the date and view of the picture, we are at the birthplace of impressionism,” she explained. “It’s a real departure from the Salon style depictions of nature that were commonplace at the time. Impressionism tends to look easy on the eyes and easy to digest, but we have to remember how revolutionary it was at the time.” She added that the painting’s setting, the village of Argenteuil in the suburbs of Paris, was “the original muse for the Impressionist painters.”
A lawyer for Gross-Eisenstädt’s descendants told ARTnews that Semmel’s collection has generated restitution claims related to other artwork for two decades.
Last year, the Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle, the Netherlands, agreed to pay restitution to Semmel’s heirs for Bernardo Strozzi’s 1635 painting “Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well,” which Semmel was forced to sell under duress in the Nazi era.
