The facts

Further to this application for restitution, the Committee initiated an investigation into the facts and the results of this investigation were recorded in a report produced in February 2004. In support of his claim, the applicant submitted a report on 9 September 2003, which describes what happened during the war to the art collection owned by his grandfather on his mother’s side, the Jew E. d.V. (hereinafter referred to as ‘V.’) who was born in 1890 and died in 1969. This report from the applicant relates specifically to a watercolour by Breitner that was part of V.’s collection. The report was produced in December 2000 by Dr A.J. Bonke, who had been given the assignment by the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum. The information compiled by Dr Bonke in his report formed part of the basis for the investigation initiated by the Restitutions Committee to enable it to assess the claim for restitution of the drawing by Israëls (NK 1399). The report on the investigation, which was drawn up under the Committee’s responsibility, was sent to the applicant with an accompanying letter dated 25 February 2004. On 27 February 2004 the applicant indicated that he agreed with the facts as presented in the report.

Special considerations

1. The applicant is acting on behalf of the joint heirs of V.
2. The circumstances in which V. lost possession of 62 paintings and other works of art from his art collection can be summarised as follows. In connection with his departure for the United States, V. placed his art collection with the furniture-removal company De Gruyter of Amsterdam in 1939. In 1942 the Nazis seized the collection under the so-called ‘LiRo decrees’ and the German clearing house for stolen property known as the ‘LiRo bank’ subsequently sold the individual works of art to various, mainly German, buyers. In the archives a list was found of the works of art from V.’s estate that were sold by the LiRo bank, and a drawing by Jozef Israëls, entitled Fisherman on horseback, is on the list.
3. The Committee considers that the loss of the drawing from the estate, as described above, should be deemed to have been involuntary under current government policy.
4. After the liberation, V., from his place of residence in the United States, made a declaration to the Dutch authorities of the works of art that he had lost. The list drawn up by V. to help trace the works of art includes a drawing by J. Israëls, entitled Vissen met paard [Fishing with horse, as opposed to Visser te paard – Fisherman on horseback] – which the Committee assumes to be the title distorted by typing errors. The post-war authorities informed V. towards the end of 1948 that none of the works of art that he had listed had been found: “..concerning the works of art that you lost during the war I regret to inform you that an investigation has revealed that we have not brought back any of the items that you listed.”
5. The drawing by Jozef Israëls that is the subject of this advice was recovered from Germany in January 1949 and added to the Dutch National Art Collection under inventory number NK 1399. Given the lack of post-war correspondence regarding this drawing, it must be assumed that no connection was made at that time between this drawing and the drawing lost by V. It is no longer possible in 2004 to ascertain where NK 1399 was found after the war and on what grounds it was allocated to the Netherlands.
6. Given that the subject of the drawing appears a number of times in the works of Jozef Israëls, the Committee initiated an art-historical investigation to determine whether Israëls’ drawing Fisherman on horseback from the National Art Collection (NK 1399) was in fact the drawing from V.’s collection. As part of this investigation, the investigators contacted Dr D.P. Dekkers, who is the author of the thesis ‘Jozef Israëls, een succesvol schilder van het vissersgenre’ [‘Josef Israëls, a successful painter of the fisherman genre’]. In the opinion of Ms Dekkers, there was only one other drawing by Jozef Israëls that was important for the present investigation. However, further inquiries revealed that that drawing, in contrast to NK 1399, was of the type described in art-historical terminology as ‘brown washed’. The conclusion of those further inquiries was therefore that the drawing known as NK 1399 was closest to the description of the drawing lost by V., ‘Fisherman on horseback, crayon’.
7. Given the results of the investigation, the Committee finds that the drawing by Jozef Israëls (NK 1399) that is in the National Art Collection is almost certainly the drawing lost by V.
8. In view of the above and with reference to the general considerations of the Restitutions Committee that the risk of the loss of further evidence due to the lapse of time should be borne by the government, the Committee considers the application for restitution of the drawing Fisherman on horseback by Jozef Israëls (NK 1399) to be sustainable.

Summary RC 1.17

FISHERMAN ON HORSEBACK BY JOZEF ISRAËLS

In a letter dated 23 October 2003 the State Secretary asked the Restitutions Committee for advice regarding an application for restitution of the crayon drawing Fisherman on horseback by Jozef Israëls (NK 1399). This drawing was recovered from Germany in January 1949 by the Dutch authorities and since then had been part of the Dutch National Art Collection under inventory number NK 1399. In recent years the drawing had been on loan to the Haags Gemeentemuseum.