The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has handed over a painting by 17th-century Dutch painter Salomon van Ruysdael to the heirs of its original owner, a Jewish entrepreneur from Hungary. The canvas was stolen by the Nazis in World War II, but the American museum only found out in 2019 that it was probably looted art.
Van Ruysdael, descendant of a well-known family of painters (especially his cousin Jacob is a famous landscape painter), immortalized the view of Beverwijk in 1646. It probably came into the possession of Ferenc Chorin in 1931.
During the war, the Hungarian industrialist and banker stored his work in a bank vault. Chorin managed to escape the Holocaust by giving the Nazis business information and fleeing to Portugal, but after the war his bank safe was found to be empty.
Swiss collection
The canvas resurfaced in 1982 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which had bought it from an art dealer in London. At the time, the museum says, there was “no information about its provenance other than that it came from a Swiss collection”.
In 1988 the title of the work did appear in a publication about Hungarian art that was lost in the war, but it contained an incorrect image and description.
In the meantime, Chorin’s heirs were looking for the work of art that they thought had been lost. It wasn’t until 2019 that information from an art historian about the canvas’s provenance appeared on the Boston museum’s website that they found out where it was.
A lawyer for Chorin’s descendants praises the “quick and just” restitution of the work by the museum to the heirs. The canvas by Salomon van Ruysdael is currently on display at Christie’s auction house in New York, where it will be auctioned later this year at the request of the family.