Paris, the Orsay Museum returns masterpieces by Renoir, Cezanne and Gauguin stolen in 1945

On Tuesday 16 May Sotheby’s will auction in New York four works recently returned to the heirs of Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939), legendary French art dealer and great supporter of the artists of his time, including Paul Gauguin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cezanne. The four works, which until a few months ago were kept in the Orsay Museum in Paris, were returned by the French State to their rightful owners after a decision last February by the Paris Administrative Court which ascertained that they had been stolen during the Second world War.

Up for auction are: the oil on canvas «Paysage de bord de mer» from 1884 (estimate 1 – 1.5 million dollars) and the work on paper and red chalk «Le Jugement de Pâris» from 1915 (estimate 300,000 – 500,000 dollars) by Renoir; a watercolor and pencil on paper by Paul Cézanne entitled “Sous-bois” from 1882-84 (estimate $250,000 – $350,000); the oil on canvas «Nature morte avec pivoines de chine et mandoline» from 1885 by Paul Gauguin (10,000,000 – 15,000,000 dollars).

The history of masterpieces
These four works were found in Germany at the end of the Second World War, to then be repatriated to France and entrusted to the care of national museums, awaiting being returned to their owners, something that had not happened until the judges’ ruling last winter . Ambroise Vollard, who died suddenly in a car accident in 1939, had left behind an extraordinary collection but not all of his pieces had been catalogued.

The investigations
According to the investigations conducted by the experts of the Administrative Court of Paris, in the mid-1940s two experts in charge of inventorying Vollard’s assets, Martin Fabiani and Étienne Bignou, allegedly stole the works with the complicity of one of the gallery owner’s brothers, Lucien Vollard , to sell them at auction before being acquired by the Nazis.