Court Says Norton Simon Museum Can Keep Nazi-Looted Works

PASADENA, CA -- After a decade-long battle, a Los Angeles federal judge has allowed the Norton Simon Museum to keep two 16th-century masterpieces seized by the Nazis from a Dutch Jewish art dealer, court papers show.

U.S. District Judge John Walter ruled last week that an heir of the late art dealer Jacques Goudstikker had failed to meet deadlines for filing an ownership claim to the separate portraits of Adam and Eve by German Renaissance master Lucas Cranach the Elder.

The nearly 500-year-old oil paintings were obtained by the Nazis after Goudstikker fled the Netherlands in 1940, and later came into the hands of a Russian collector who sold them to industrialist Norton Simon in 1971. The works have been on display at the museum since that time.

Goudstikker's daughter-in-law, Marei von Saher, sued the museum in 2007, claiming she was the rightful owner of the artworks.

A request for comment left with the plaintiff's lawyer was not immediately answered.

According to the suit, the paintings were bought at auction in 1931 by Goudstikker.

About 10 years later, Goudstikker was forced to sell the paintings to Adolf Hitler's right-hand man, Hermann Goring.

Norton Simon officials said the museum legally bought the art from Russian Cmdr. George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff, whose collection was seized by the Soviet government after the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Walter dismissed the case in 2012, finding that the plaintiff's claims conflicted with U.S. policy on recovered art. Appeals went up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in January 2015 declined to consider the museum's request to dismiss the case.

The works were returned to the Dutch government after World War II, which returned them to Stroganoff-Scherbatoff in 1966, according to court documents. Stroganoff-Scherbatoff then sold the pieces to Simon.

--City News Service. Image via Norton Simon Museum