2024-04-16
Last week, staff at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels removed a still life painting and prepared it for transport. The painting is to be returned to the grandchildren of Gustav and Emma Mayer, who fled anti-Semitic persecution from their home in Frankfurt in 1938.
The painting "Blumenstilleben" ("Flowers") by Lovis Corinth was stolen by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (an official branch of the Third Reich) and recovered by Leo Van Puyvelde (a Belgian art historian) after the liberation of Brussels and donated to the Royal Museum of Brussels in 1951. The institution did not know to whom the work had previously belonged.
Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) was a German painter and printmaker who greatly influenced German Expressionism. In 1915, he was elected president of the Berlin Secession. In the first years of his artistic activity he was strongly influenced by the paintings of the old Flemish and Dutch masters. Later he took a clear turn towards impressionism and then devoted himself to expressive painting. Interestingly, during the Nazi period, the painter's early works were acclaimed, while his later, more innovative works were regarded as "degenerate art".
The activities of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels deserve praise. Already in 2008, the institution appealed on its website to send information about Lovis Corinth's painting depicting a vase with flowers. In 2016, the family of Gustav and Emma Mayer came forward regarding the above work.
Before returning to its rightful owners, the painting was on display for a fortnight at an exhibition on art looted by the Nazis and by Belgium during the colonial period. The Mayer family is looking for a total of thirty works of art stolen during the Second World War.