An 18th-century painting stolen by the Nazis, which turned up eight decades later in a real estate listing for a home in Argentina owned by descendants of a financier to the SS, must be returned to the heirs of the rightful owner, reports France24.
Attorneys, investigators, and heirs of collectors who had their art looted by the Nazis, or left it behind under duress, often spend decades trying to track down the artworks. So a public real estate listing might seem like the unlikeliest place to find an artwork missing since the 1940s.
But that is what happened when Patricia Kadgien listed a property for sale in Mar del Plata, Argentina last August. The portrait of a woman, widely reported to be by Giuseppe Ghislandi (though questions have arisen on the attribution) once belonged to the Jewish dealer Jacques Goudstikker, who fled Amsterdam in 1940 and died in an accident on board a ship to the US. Many Nazis and their families fled to Argentina, and the family of Friedrich Kadgien, an SS officer who resided in Switzerland by 1945 and later in Argentina, came into possession of the portrait.
When sleuths identified the painting, the real estate listing was removed, and the Kadgien family told a reporter who called to inquire that “I don’t know what information you want from me and I don’t know what painting you are talking about.” Police raided the home to find the work no longer there, and the space where it had hung occupied by a large tapestry. Federal prosecutors brought charges the following month. Patricia Kadgien insisted that she was the rightful owner, but she was placed under house arrest with her husband after removing the painting.
“’An order will be issued for the painting to be returned to the heir,’… judge Santiago Inchausti declared following an agreement reached between the concerned parties,” reports France24, adding that the Kadgiens agreed to return the painting to Goudstikker’s daughter-in-law and sole heir, Marei von Saher, and donate around $3,200 to local hospitals.
Goudstikker amassed a significant collection of Old Masters paintings and sold them under duress, as ARTnews previously reported. Some have been returned, including a 16th-century painting attributed to the Dutch artist Cornelis van Haarlem that was given back in 2023 after a collector offered the work to a French museum.
In 2009, the Jewish Museum in New York staged a show of works that previously belonged to Goudstikker, with the show’s description noting at the time that his family had successfully recovered 200 works. Among the pieces in the show were paintings by Salomon van Ruysdael, Jacob van Ruisdael, and Jan van der Heyde.
Many paintings from Goudstikker’s collection remain missing.
