For years Portrait of a Young Girl by the Dutch artist Toon Kelder has quietly hung in a hallway of a house near Utrecht. This week, the art detective Arthur Brand announced that the painting has been discovered in the possession of the heirs of a notorious Dutch collaborator and SS commander Hendrik Seyffardt and confirmed that it is one of the more than 1,100 paintings that were plundered by German occupiers from the Amsterdam art dealer Jacques Goudstikker.
Brand was contacted several months ago by an heir of Seyffardt, he tells The Art Newspaper. The man, whose family changed its name, reached out after finding out about his ancestry.
“I discovered that my family is in possession of the looted painting,” said the man, who wishes to remain anonymous, to the Dutch paper the Telegraaf. “I was stunned. This is why I am now bringing it to public attention. I feel deep shame about the family past and I am furious about the years of silence. The painting must be returned to the rightful Jewish owners.”
Brand found the painting listed in the archives of an auction in 1940, where part of the looted Goudstikker collection was sold Photo courtesy of Arthur Brand
On the back of the painting, according to images shared by Brand, is the “Collectie Goudstikker” label and the number 92. When Brand investigated the archives of an auction in 1940, where part of the looted Goudstikker collection was sold, he found item No 92 was listed as Portrait of a Young Girl.
The anonymous man told Brand the location of the painting, owned by a relative. However, the Dutch authorities cannot raid the property because the statute of limitations for the theft has passed, while the Dutch Restitutions Commission strictly only has power over national collections. “The only way to get it back was to announce it”, Brand says, in the hopes that public exposure would encourage the current owner to return the painting to its rightful heirs.
The owner told the Telegraaf that she did not know it was looted. “Now that you confront me with it like this, I understand that Mr Goudstikker’s heirs want the painting back,” she reportedly said. “I didn’t know that.” She added that the family is discussing the return of the painting.
Brand added that the case had symbolic weight, after years of silence about historic collaboration with the Nazi regime in a country where three-quarters of the Jewish population was murdered during the Nazi occupation. “We are talking about a Goudstikker, which is a symbolic name for Nazi looted art—and the Nazis [perpetrated] the biggest art theft in history,” Brand says.
Brand added that the case had echoes of Portrait of a Lady (around 1710) by Giuseppe Ghislandi, which was spotted last year in a house sale advert for a property in Argentina owned by a senior Nazi official, who emigrated after the Second World War. That painting, also from the Goudstikker collection, has been formally claimed by the rightful heirs.
