Restitution of ‘Bord de Mer’ by Claude Monet to the heirs of Adalbert Parlagi of Vienna

Commission for Looted Art in Europe Press Release, 9 October 2024

London and New Orleans 9 October 2024: The Commission for Looted Art in Europe is pleased to announce the restitution of Claude Monet’s ‘Bord de Mer’, 1865, to the heirs of Adalbert and Hilda Parlagi of Vienna.

Claude Monet (1840–1926)

'Bord de Mer’

Pastel on paper, 17.8 x 27.9 cm

Adalbert (Bela) Parlagi was born in Budapest on 16 July 1895 and moved to Vienna in 1913 where he married Hilda née Hock who was born in Prague. A month after the Anschluss with Germany in March 1938, Bela and Hilda Parlagi fled Vienna, together with their children Hedwig and Franz, leaving all their possessions behind. They arranged for the contents of their home and their art collection, which included works by Rudolf von Alt, Franz von Lenbach, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Paul Signac, to be stored with a Vienna transport company for shipment to them in London, which they reached in December 1938. But nothing was sent on to them, and in August 1940 the Gestapo ordered the confiscation and sale of all their property with the proceeds to go to the German Reich.

In early 1946, Bela Parlagi began extensive efforts to find and recover his property, contacting the Vienna shipping company, the Austrian Federal Ministry for Property Security and Economic Planning, and the Austrian Bundesdenkmalamt (BDA) (Federal Office for the Protection of Monuments). He was told that all the furnishings of his home including the art collection had been sold at the Dorotheum auction house in Vienna in 1941 and 1942. Every enquiry to establish to whom they had been sold met with indifference at best. Even though the name of the purchaser of the Monet was known to be the Vienna auctioneer Adolf Weinmüller, Weinmüller claimed to the BDA to have no recollection of the picture and no knowledge of where it was.

Bela Parlagi’s unsuccessful efforts to find and recover his looted property continued until his death in 1981. His efforts to obtain compensation from 1946 onwards from both Austria and Germany equally met with repeated failure, on the grounds that no one knew where his property was or where the proceeds of sale had gone.

Following the passing of an art restitution law in Austria in 1998, Bela Parlagi’s son Franz Parlagi (1926-2012) wrote to the Austrian government asking them to instigate a search for his father’s artworks. He was told that enquiries had been circulated to all the Austrian federal museums but none of the works were to be found in their collections. Franz was to be as unsuccessful in recovering any of the artworks as his father before him.

In 2014 the family approached the London-based Commission for Looted Art in Europe to ask for their help. The Commission’s research suggested the subject of the Monet was the coast of Normandy near Saint Addresse, a familiar theme for the artist. There had been no trace of the work for decades. But in 2021 the Commission discovered that the Monet had recently appeared for sale in New Orleans and been sold in 2019 to a private collection. The online information published by the dealer in New Orleans showed that the picture’s first public appearance since 1941 was in an exhibition in a small museum in Eastern France in 2016. The New Orleans dealer had acquired it in 2017 from a Paris gallery, the lender to the exhibition.

The published provenance was unverifiable, and there was no pre-1953 provenance for the picture, although its acquisition by Bela Parlagi in 1936 in Vienna was well documented. Bela Parlagi had bought it in an April 1936 Albert Kende auction and the catalogue had included dimensions, medium and an illustration. When sold by the Gestapo at the Dorotheum in June 1941, it had also been illustrated and equally described in detail.

Thanks to the efforts of the FBI Art Crime Team to whom the Commission turned for help in recovering the Monet, and to those of the Offices of the US Attorneys, the Monet was taken into FBI custody. In May 2024, the Eastern District Court of the US District Court of Louisiana ordered it be returned to the heirs of Bela Parlagi, his two granddaughters Helen Lowe and Françoise Parlagi. The FBI had found the Monet in the ownership of Dr and Mrs. Kevin Schlamp who voluntarily gave up the picture and their title to it.

“Our grandfather would have been so happy to find out this Monet was being restituted after all his attempts over the years”, the heirs said in a joint statement. “This is a very moving and exceptional day for us, a day neither of us ever thought would happen. We would like to express our gratitude to all those involved, especially to the Commission for Looted Art in Europe for all their work, and particularly to the FBI and the US Attorney’s Office for their determination in enabling the Monet to come back to us at last.”

Anne Webber, Co-Chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, said: “We cannot express enough appreciation to Christopher McKeogh and his colleagues at the FBI Art Crime Team and to Peter Mansfield and his colleagues at the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New Orleans for all their work which has led to the restitution of this beautiful work by Monet. For 80 years the family have made tireless efforts to find and recover their looted paintings. Now, thanks to the commitment of the FBI to investigate and track down the picture, a day the family never believed would come has finally arrived.”

‘Portrait of Richard Wagner’ by Franz von Lenbach (1836-1904)

In 2021 the Commission for Looted Art in Europe also located another of the looted Parlagi artworks, a chalk drawing of Richard Wagner by Franz von Lenbach. It was found in the collection of the Albertina Museum in Vienna, an Austrian federal museum. Sold by the Gestapo at the same auction in Vienna in June 1941 as the Monet, it had been acquired by the Albertina Museum in 1982. The Commission contacted the Albertina with the claim and in March 2022 the Austrian government’s Art Restitution Board advised the drawing be restituted by the government. In March 2024 the restitution took place in London at the residence of the Austrian Ambassador.

Franz von Lenbach

Portrait of Richard Wagner, 1881

63.5 x 53 cm

Chalk on paper

Six Artworks Still Missing

Sold by the Gestapo at the Dorotheum auction house, Vienna, and not seen since 1941/1942:

· Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Sitzender Fischer (Seated fisherman), 1874, charcoal drawing, signed and dated, bought by Adalbert Parlagi in Vienna in 1936, sold by the Gestapo at the Dorotheum Vienna sale of 20 June 1941 to Valentin, not seen since.

· Paul Signac (1863-1935), Seine in Paris (Pont Alexandre), 1903, watercolour, signed and dated, bought by Adalbert Parlagi in Vienna in 1936, sold by the Gestapo at the Dorotheum Vienna sale of 20 June 1941 to Weinmüller, Vienna, not seen since.

· Carl Spitzweg (1808-1885), Waldschlucht mit Spaziergängerin (Forest gorge with a woman walking), oil on wood, signed, bought by Adalbert Parlagi in Vienna in 1937, sold by the Gestapo at the Dorotheum Vienna sale of 27 February 1942 to ‘Meuke’ or ‘Meyke’, not seen since.

Sold by the Gestapo at the Dorotheum auction house, Vienna, re-sold 1985-2006 in Germany and Switzerland, and not seen since.

· Rudolf von Alt (1789-1872), Das Gutensteinertal (The Gutensteiner Valley), 1865, watercolour, bought by Adalbert Parlagi in 1923 in Vienna, sold by the Gestapo at the Dorotheum Vienna sale of May 1941 to Wilhelm Schmid, Munich, offered for sale in Salzburg, Austria, in 1985, not seen since.

· Miklos Barabas (1810-1898), Porträts der zwei Kinder aus der gräflichen Familie Erdödy (Portrait of two children from the Count Erdödy family), 1846, watercolour, signed and dated, bought by Bela Parlagi in Vienna in 1937, sold by the Gestapo at the Dorotheum Vienna sale of June 1941 to Fiser-Traub of Vienna and Prague, sold at auction at Galerie Fischer, Lucerne, Switzerland, in November 2006, not seen since.

· Carl Spitzweg (1808-1885), Der fromme Einsiedler (The pious hermit), oil on canvas, signed, sold by the Gestapo at the Dorotheum Vienna on 27 February 1942, sold at auction at Kunsthaus Lempertz, Cologne, Germany, in December 1997, not seen since.