An artwork created from 1615-1620 and stolen by German Nazis in 1940 from a Jewish-owned bank’s collection sold on July 3 for a substantial sum following the return to its owners’ heirs.
Sotheby’s auctioned “Head Study of a Young Woman,” a primarily brown portrait featuring a woman with pink cheeks and painted by Jacob (“Jacques”) Jordaens. The painting sold for £360,000, which equates to $460,800.
The recovered work is the first to be sold by heirs of shareholders of Lisser & Rosenkranz Bank.
They seek a further 2,500 drawings and 50 paintings that had been held as collateral for a loan to Franz Koenigs, a Dutch collector. The primary shareholders in the bank were Siegfried Kramarsky and Salomon Flörsheim, also Jewish.
Those representing the work’s heirs say they suspect that Luftwaffe head Hermann Göring may have given the painting to Adolf Hitler on his birthday in 1941 or 1942.
Also a draughtsman, and a designer of tapestries and prints, Jordaens, lived from 1593 to 1678. Critics and historians regard him as a key 17th-century Flemish artist known for his scenes of peasant life.
Another work by Jordaens, “Saint Martin Healing the Possessed Man,” sold for $4.73 million in a Sotheby auction in 2016, the highest price one of his paintings has generated.
