A celebrated painting by Edward Munch is to be presented to the granddaughter of composer Gustav Mahler following far-reaching changes in restitution laws.
'Summer Night On The Beach' has been on display in Vienna's Belvedere Gallery for several decades now, yet an Austrian court has ruled that the state gallery's acquisition was improper.
The Mahlers fled Austria with the coming of the Nazis in 1938. Gustav's widow, Alma, was an Aryan Viennese but she remarried the Jewish poet Franz Werfel. Mahler himself was of Jewish descent, and hence his children were vulnerable to Nazi harassment.
With the family in exile, the Mahlers art collection was seized upon by Alma's stepfather, the painter Carl Moll, who had converted to the Nazi creed. Moll sold the Munch painting to the Belvedere gallery in 1938. According to Gustav's granddaughter Marina, this was without the permission of the family. Moll himself committed suicide following the Nazi defeat in 1945.
In 1999 an Austrian court ruled that 'Summer Night On The Beach' would not be released by the Belvedere. However, all changed with the recent amendments to restitution laws. Gustav's granddaughter Marina concluded a fresh case last week, and the painting is to be returned.
This month's decision is a major blow to the Belvedere. The gallery has already been obliged to give up five Klimts this year in a highly similar case. The Klimt paintings were subsequently sold by the rightful heir for over 300 million dollars.
Marina Mahler, who now lives in London, told reporters that the Munch case had been an exhausting struggle, but that she is delighted to be reunited with the painting after over sixty years. On her plans for the painting itself - a dreamy confection that counts amongst Munch's finest landscapes - she is unequivocal: "I am going to sit in front of it and look at it for a long, long, long time...."
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