Stolen by the Nazis, then returned to his heirs and recently sold at auction, The father, a painting by Marc Chagall, is on display from Thursday, February 16 at the Jewish Museum in New York.
Painted in 1911 by the Franco-Russian painter during his installation in Paris in an artists’ residence on the edge of Montparnasse, The father East “an intimate portrait of the artist’s father Zahar, who spent his whole life doing the same manual trade in Vitebsk, Belarus”explains the Jewish Museum.
His works of the time are rare since “many of them were destroyed when he left Paris to return to Russia in 1914”explained the vice-president of the Phillips house, which organized its auction in New York last November.
Marc Chagall buys the painting himself
After having disappeared for a time, we find the trace of the painting when it was bought in 1928 by a Jewish Polish luthier, David Cender, in Warsaw. In the spring of 1940, he was forced to leave his home and go to the Lodz ghetto. He then loses all his possessions. David Cender will be deported a few years later to Auschwitz with his wife and daughter. He will be the only one to come back.
Marc Chagall. “The Father” 1911. Oil on canvas, 80.3 × 44.5 cm. Private collection, L2023–1. artwork. / Private Collection©ADGAP, Paris
After settling in France in 1958, David Cender initiated proceedings with the German government and requested compensation as a victim of spoliation. In 1966, he died without having found any trace of this painting. German justice will not recognize his claim for spoliation until 1972.
The work had meanwhile reappeared in exhibitions. According to the Phillips house and the French Ministry of Culture, it was Marc Chagall himself who bought it, probably between 1947 and 1953 because it was a piece to which he was very attached. After the painter’s death in 1985, the painting entered the national collections in 1988. First assigned to the Center Pompidou, it remained for nearly twenty-five years in the Museum of Art and History of Judaism in Paris. .
Restitution
But at the start of 2022, the French Parliament unanimously validated the restitution of 15 works looted from Jews during the Second World War belonging to public collections. The father is part of it and is given the following April to the heirs of David Cender, his grand-nephews and nieces.
They decide to sell the painting. A common scenario “when a work is returned so long after” car “there are multiple heirs and the work cannot be divided”explained the vice-president of the Phillips house.
The sale took place during the New York Fall Auctions in November 2022. The father found a buyer for the sum of 7.4 million dollars (6.9 million euros). No information is available on the buyer, as is often the case with sales of this type. We just know that the buyer has agreed to lend the painting to the Jewish Museum in New York where it will be visible from February 16 until January 1, 2024.
