Switzerland, Kunstmuseum Bern sells Manet painting to clear debts related to Gurlitt bequest

An Édouard Manet painting sold to clear the debts of the museum that owns it: that’s what happened last month at the Kunstmuseum in Bern, Switzerland, which sold the painting known as Marine, Temps d’orage to the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, Japan, for the hefty sum of 4 million Swiss francs.

The work has a decidedly troubled history: painted in 1873, it was part of the wealthy collection of Cornelius Gurlitt, son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, a controversial art dealer active in Nazi Germany (several paintings in the Gurlitt collection had in fact been requisitioned by Jewish families). Before that, the work was owned by Japanese industrialist Kôjirô Matsukata, who in the first half of the twentieth century amassed an important collection of European works, including Impressionist paintings: he wanted to establish a museum of European art in Japan. When Matsukata returned to Japan, he entrusted 400 works to Léonce Bénédite, director of the Musée du Luxembourg: during the war, the collection was placed in storage at the Musée Rodin, while the Manet painting in question was entrusted to an agent of Matsukata’s, Kôsaburô Hioki, who was responsible for the security of the collection. Because the costs of maintaining the collection were high, Hioki sold twenty paintings, including Manet’s work, to raise money to cover the costs for the rest of the collection. Thus, between 1940 and 1942, the painting came into the possession of Hildebrand Gurlitt.

In 2014, the Kunstmuseum Bern surprisingly inherited the entire Gurlitt collection: because it was known that the provenance of many paintings was questionable, a research team (the Gurlitt Project) was set up in order to investigate which works had been acquired by Gurlitt legitimately and which had not. Manet’s painting is among those acquired lawfully and has been classified with a green sticker, which as part of the investigation indicates works for which it is known to be “certain or highly probable” of provenance as art not requisitioned by the Nazis.

The Kunstmuseum, from the moment it was confronted with the enormous Gurlitt collection, made it clear that it reserved the right to sell works of ascertained provenance in order to smooth out any financial deficits arising from its management. And so indeed it did: the costs of research, the costs of lawyers, and the costs of restoring the works, joining the costs of two exhibitions organized by the Swiss institute, drove up the museum’s debts, which it therefore decided to sell the work in order to clear them. The sum of 4 million was estimated by independent experts and, the museum points out, corresponds to the expenses the institute estimates for managing the research, restorations, and paperwork related to the Gurlitt collection (at the moment, out of more than a thousand works only 28 have been given the “green stamp”). Should the proceeds from the sale exceed the costs associated with the Gurlitt collection, the Kunstmuseum has already made it known that the difference will be used for further research on the legacy. Moreover, for the Japanese museum, which already houses much of the Matsukata collection (which forms the core of the National Museum of Western Art), it is a reunification with the rest of the collection.

“The Kunstmuseum Bern,” said Marcel Brülhart, a member of the museum’s board of trustees and head of the Gurlitt Project, “accepted the Gurlitt legacy with a great sense of responsibility, so as to clarify the provenance of the paintings and to return the stolen works to their rightful owners. The board has always made it clear that the museum does not want to make a profit from the bequest, but neither can it incur additional costs from the Gurlitt Project. The sale is necessary to obtain resources to cover the costs that the Kunstmuseum Bern has accumulated over the past five years.”

“The National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo,” says its director Akiko Mabuchi, "announces with excitement the purchase of Édouard Manet’s Marine, Temps d’orage, a masterpiece once owned by Kôjirô Matsukata, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the museum’s opening. Kôjirô Matsukata acquired more than three thousand works of Western art in at least ten years from 1916, including the 375 works that initially remained in France but eventually returned to Japan to become the core of the museum’s collection. The remaining works, with the exception of the 950 lost during the fire in the warehouse that stored them in London, have been the focus of major efforts to bring the collection together since the National Museum of Western Art acquired some 270 since its opening. This addition is a moment of great joy for all of us and for Japanese art lovers. I express gratitude to the staff and board of the Kunstmuseum Bern who approved the sale, and I declare that the National Museum of Western Art will carefully preserve and permanently display this work by Manet that has returned from its long and difficult journey."

“The museum,” says Nina Zimmer, director of the Kunstmuseum, "is delighted that Marine, Temps d’orage by Édouard Manet is being reunited with the rest of the Matsukata collection. By accepting the Gurlitt bequest, organizing the Gurlitt: Status Report exhibition, and subsidizing the Gurlitt Project, we have made great progress in understanding the complex history of Nazi art looting and the fate of the Jewish artists, collectors, and dealers who were victims of the Nazi regime. The ultimate return of the work to what could be described as its spiritual home in Japan seems to us the ideal solution, with benefits for both institutions."

Pictured: Édouard Manet Marine, Temps d’orage (1873; oil on canvas, 55 x 72.5 cm; Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art)

Switzerland, Kunstmuseum Bern sells Manet painting to clear debts related to Gurlitt bequest

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