Source: ArtDaily (www.artdaily.org)

FORT WORTH, TX - The Kimbell Art Museum just announced that it has repurchased the Joseph Mallord William Turner painting Glaucus and Scylla (1841), which the Museum had returned last year to the heirs of John and Anna Jaffé after an investigation concluded that the painting had been unlawfully seized by the pro-Nazi Vichy regime in France in 1943. The painting was purchased this morning at Christie’s, New York, for a hammer price of $5.7 million.

Commented Timothy Potts, director of the Kimbell Art Museum: “This is a wonderful day both for the Jaffé heirs, who have now received compensation for the confiscation of the painting during the Nazi era, and for the Kimbell, which is able to welcome back its most important British painting. Turner’s late paintings represent one of the highpoints of European art, and Glaucus and Scylla has all of the expressive tumult and luminosity that you want in his late landscapes. We’re planning a big homecoming.”

The painting, which had been in the Kimbell’s collection since 1966 prior to its restitution last year, shows a mythological scene of unrequited love in which the brilliant setting sun suggests the power of fate. In 2006, in light of the evidence linking the Turner to an unlawful seizure, the Kimbell returned the painting to Alain Monteagle, the representative of the heirs of Anna Jaffé’s three nephews and one niece (all now deceased), to whom she bequeathed her property in her will.

Kimbell reacquires disputed Turner painting

Source: GuideLive (www.guidelive.com), By MICHAEL GRANBERRY

For $5.7 million, the Kimbell Art Museum of Fort Worth has reacquired a J.M.W. Turner painting it surrendered last summer to the heirs of the John and Anna Jaffé family of France, after it was proved that the painting had been unlawfully seized by the pro-Nazi Vichy regime in 1943.

The reacquisition was not without competition. The Kimbell won out over several other bidders during Thursday's auction at Christie's in New York.

"I'm thrilled," said Timothy Potts, director of the Kimbell, which originally bought the painting, Glaucus and Scylla, in 1966, six years before the museum's opening.

Kimbell officials did not disclose what they originally paid for the 1841 masterpiece, which Mr. Potts termed "important both as an individual work of art and as a representative of the great British tradition of landscape painting. We couldn't see a more worthy painting becoming available to fill that gap, so all the more reason to try to reacquire the one we had before."

John Jaffé was a British subject and prominent Jewish art collector who lived in Nice, France, with his wife, Anna. Mr. Jaffé had acquired Glaucus and Scylla in 1902 from a gallery in Paris. He died in 1933. Amid the mounting Nazi threat, the painting was bequeathed to his wife, who then bequeathed all of her property, including Glaucus and Scylla, to three nephews and a niece.

Trapped in France by the war, Mrs. Jaffé died in 1942. Representatives of Vichy, the Nazis' puppet government in France, ignored her bequest and seized the entire contents of her home, including Glaucus and Scylla. They also arrested one of her nephews, who died at Auschwitz.

The painting disappeared from records until 1956, when Emile Leitz of Paris sold it to Agnew's of London. It was sold to Howard Young Galleries of New York in 1957 and in 1966 to the Kimbell by Newhouse Galleries Inc.

Alain Monteagle, who represented the Jaffé heirs, approached the Kimbell in 2005. Mr. Monteagle could not be reached for comment.

"He told us all about his family and what had happened and how he remembered this painting as a child," said Mr. Potts. "It was all very moving. It brought home a very personal side. It's not just something you read about it in books."

Mr. Potts said Thursday that museum officials had "made no attempt to resist returning the work. It was clear that this was the morally correct thing to do. Having said that, it did leave a hole in our collection. But with today's events, we're able to close that circle and bring it back to the Kimbell."