Claim Resolution

Resolution: Agreement reached, museum retained work

Resolution Date: 2000

Cranach's Madonna and Child in a Landscape has had a troubled, even notorious, history. In March 1999 the North Carolina Museum of Art was notified that researchers had recently identified the painting as one stolen by the Nazis in 1940 from a large Jewish private collection in Vienna. In 1939, in exchange for safe passage to Switzerland, the Nazis forced collector and industrialist Philipp von Gomperz to "sell" all of his property and other assets, including Cranach's Madonna and Child in a Landscape. Paintings by German Old Masters were avidly sought by Hitler and the Nazi elite, many of whom were amassing vast collections of looted art. Cranach's Madonna and Child in a Landscape was allotted to Baldur von Schirach, governor of Vienna and the leader of the Hitler Youth. A year later, with Vienna threatened by the Soviet Army, Schirach entrusted the Madonna and Child in a Landscape to a family friend who subsequently sold it through a Munich art dealer to dealers in New York. The picture was purchased in the early 1950s by George Khuner, who was almost certainly unaware of the painting's history. His widow bequeathed the painting to the North Carolina Museum of Art, and it arrived after her death in 1984. As soon as the facts of this story were confirmed in early 2000, the Museum made the decision to return Cranach's Madonna and Child in a Landscape to the heirs of Dr. Gomperz. In gratitude, the family offered the painting to the Museum as a partial gift "because the public should know that the heirs of Philipp von Gomperz appreciate the sense of justice shown by the [Museum's] decision to return the painting." As a result, the work was acquired by the North Carolina Museum of Art as the partial gift of Cornelia and Marianne Hainisch in tribute to their great-uncle Philipp von Gomperz, and as a partial purchase with funds from the State of North Carolina, Mrs. George Khuner, Howard Young, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, D.H. Cavat (in memory of W. R. Valentiner), Ernest V. Horvath, and Arthur Leroy and Lila Fisher Caldwell, by exchange; and Thomas S. Kenan III