THE HAGUE – The Restitutions Committee has advised Minister of Education, Culture and Science Jet Bussemaker to restitute a painting by Jan van Goyen in the Dutch National Art Collection to the daughter of its Jewish owner. The Minister has accepted the advice.
The advice concerns an application for the restitution of a painting in the Netherlands Art Property Collection, which consists of artworks returned from Germany after the Second World War.
The painting proved to have come from the private collection of the Jewish banker Gustaaf Hamburger, who went to the United States with his family in 1940, leaving behind his possessions in the Netherlands. During the German occupation the painting was seized as ‘enemy property’.
The Restitutions Committee concludes that there was involuntary loss of possession as a result of circumstances related to the Nazi regime. It therefore advises Minister Bussemaker to return the painting to Gustaaf Hamburger’s daughter, who lives in Switzerland. The Minister has accepted the advice.
In March 2013 the Restitutions Committee advised the Minister to return three pottery dishes from the Dutch National Art Collection to the same applicant. This advice was also adopted by the Minister.
The Advisory Committee on the Assessment of Restitution Applications for Items of Cultural Value and the Second World War advises about claims to items of cultural value lost during the Nazi period, also referred to as looted art. Since the Restitutions Committee was established in 2002 it has issued advice in 128 cases and has had 141 claims submitted to it.
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News
10 April 2017
The Restitutions Committee has advised Minister of Education, Culture and Science Jet Bussemaker to restitute a portrait by Tischbein from the Dutch National Art Collection to the heirs of the original Polish owner Count August Krasicki.
21 April 2021
On 7 December 2020 the Committee for the Evaluation of the Restitution Policy for Cultural Heritage Objects from the Second World War, the Kohnstamm Committee, advocated in its report Striving for Justice a recalibration and intensification of the restitution policy by, among other things, changing the assessment framework.
15 December 2022
The Restitutions Committee’s advice to the State Secretary for Culture and Media and its binding opinions concerning Amsterdam City Council and The Hague City Council are to the effect that a total of six artworks should be restituted to the beneficiaries of Emma Budge (1852-1937). On the basis of the investigation by the Expert Centre Restitution (ECR), among other things, the Restitutions Committee concludes that it is highly plausible that the artworks were the property of the German-Jewish Emma Budge and that it is sufficiently plausible that her beneficiaries involuntarily lost possession of them after her death.
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