A painting stolen from the family of art collector Adolphe Schloss by Germans during the World War II occupation of France will be returned to his descendants in New York, the French consulate said in a statement Tuesday.
The painting, Dutch artist Salomon Koninck’s 1639 “A Scholar Sharpening His Quill,” was part of an important collection of Flemish and Dutch works owned by Schloss, a Jewish man who lived in Paris.
Its return on April 1, facilitated by FBI agents, will take place at the French consulate under the watch of French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and representatives from the Jewish community, according to the statement.
The identities of Schloss’s descendants were not immediately available.
A collection of some 333 paintings owned by Schloss was originally stored in southern France during World War II before the Nazis found and seized it.
Some of those works, including the Koninck painting, were then sent to Hitler’s headquarters in Munich.
The painting resurfaced in November 2017 when a Chilean art dealer tried to sell it through a New York auction house, the Manhattan federal prosecutor said last year upon launching a formal procedure to return it to Schloss’s heirs.
The seller explained to authorities that his father had purchased the piece in 1952 from Walter Andreas Hofer, the man who was in charge of buying art for Nazi leader Hermann Goring, and a major player on the stolen goods market.
Millions of items owned by Jews and in art galleries were confiscated under the Nazi-aligned French Vichy government’s anti-Semitic laws during the German occupation. With several major auction houses located in New York, Manhattan prosecutors regularly submit requests to return goods stolen during World War II.