Heirs of Jewish Art Dealer Receive Portion of Proceeds From Cézanne Painting Sold for $39 Million by Museum

Fruits et pot de gingembre (Fruits and Jar of Ginger), from around 1890-93, was sold at a Christie’s auction that took place in New York to an anonymous telephone bidder, The Wall Street Journal reported. The still life painting, one of three by Cézanne included in the auction, was previously owned by Jacob Goldschmidt, who ran a gallery in Frankfurt, Germany, before Nazis seized power of the country in 1933.

Goldschmidt jointly acquired the Cézanne painting in 1929 with L’Art Moderne, a Swiss affiliate of the Paris-based Bernheim-Jeune gallery, according to The Art Newspaper. After facing Nazi persecution in Germany, Goldschmidt sold Fruits et pot de gingembre under duress to Sidney Brown by way of L’Art Moderne. Goldschmidt was also forced to give up his profession as an art dealer in 1934. He emigrated two years later to the United States.

Museum Langmatt is home to the Impressionist art collection of Sidney and Jenny Brown, whose family electrical engineering company used thousands of forced workers, such as Nazi concentration camp prisoners, during its operations in Nazi Germany, the The Art Newspaper reported.

Christie’s said in a statement last month that details about the painting’s provenance surfaced only recently during “rigorous pre-sale restitution research” done by specialists at the auction house, which then helped facilitate the restitution settlement between Goldschmidt’s heirs and Museum Langmatt.

Christie’s, the Foundation Langmatt, and Goldschmidt’s heirs have “worked cooperatively together to find an amicable resolution,” the auction house added, noting that the settlement agreement “fully resolves and settles any dispute over the ownership of the work, and [the] clear title will pass to the successful bidder at auction.”