Cezanne’s “La Montagne Sainte-Victoire” was found in the trove of notorious “art hermit” Cornelius Gurlitt in 2014. How the work came to be in the hands of the Nazis remains a mystery.
The Bern Museum of Fine Art in Switzerland will retain ownership of a Paul Cezanne painting found in a Nazi-era trove in 2014, the artist’s heirs confirmed on Tuesday. They also said that the museum had agreed to regularly exhibit the work in Cezanne’s hometown of Aix-en-Provence, France.
“This solution in the spirit of the Swiss-French friendship and partnership allows two great museums, Bern Museum of Fine Art and the Musee Granet in Aix-en-Provence, to show a masterpiece by our grandfather Paul Cezanne for the benefit and enjoyment of a great audience,” said Philippe Cezanne (pictured above), great-grandson of the master painter.
The painting was found in the now-infamous Gurlitt collection, originally amassed by German art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt under direction from the Nazis to sell or get rid of “degenerate” art seized from museums.
“Of all of us, he gave the brightest and purest timbre to color,” declared Franz Marc after his friend and fellow artist August Macke fell in World War I in 1914. Macke painted his sailboat images at Lake Tegernsee in Bavaria. This painting was among the roughly 1,500 found in the Cornelius Gurlitt collection.
Slender women are a characteristic motif of the influential German expressionist art movement. This model reposes unclothed on a water-surrounded rock.
The artist had a reputation for social criticism even as a young man. “I can’t get ahead; my paintings can’t be sold. I’m either becoming famous or infamous,” he said in 1920, not long before finishing this painting.
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