Is the local museum housing stolen art?

I’m going to answer the tease at the beginning instead of at the end.  The answer is “No.”  At least as it applies to the painting this essay is about.  There may be stolen art in the museum but Rembrandt’s Elderly Jew in a Fur Hat was not stolen—at least not by anybody in the chain of ownership before the painting arrived in Oakland.

The back story:  I have seen all the available paintings attributed to the Dutch Master Johannes Vermeer.  When one studies Vermeer, one develops an interest in stolen art.  Vermeer’s paintings have been stolen a total of six times.  One painting, Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid, was stolen twice.  Once for political reasons (by IRA groupie Rose Dugdale) and once to ransom or fence for cash (by Dublin’s Robin Hood-type thief Martin Cahill).  Adolf Hitler both bought a Vermeer (from a fellow Austrian) and stole a Vermeer (from the Rothschild collection).  But if the seller of The Art of Painting (my favorite Vermeer) hadn’t taken the offer to sell, I’m sure Adolf would have had the painting confiscated.  

The largest heist of art in the United States took place at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston on March 18, 1990.  Thirteen pieces of art and collectables were stolen (including two Rembrandt paintings and one self-portrait) but the theft is best known for the Vermeer painting (The Concert) that was taken.   The theft has never been solved.  The FBI still has it as an open case with a $10 million reward for the information leading to the recovery of the art work.

Speaking of Rembrandt, that is where our essay starts.  An Austrian-born tailor named Adolphe Schloss accumulated an art collection of 333 pieces.  When Adolphe passed away his family inherited the works, housed in Paris.  When the Germans were on their way to town, the Schloss family moved the collection to a chateau in the south of France.  It is difficult to transport and hide 333 pieces of art and somebody tipped off the Germans.  The Schloss collection was “lifted” by the Germans in April of 1943.  Of the 333 pieces, 262 were packed up and shipped to Munich, 49 were sent to the Louvre and 22 were sold to an art dealer who used an alias to purchase the paintings.  That dealer’s true identity is still a mystery.

__________

While Hitler was hiding in the bunker in Berlin in his final days, the building in Munich where some of the stolen art was stored was raided by hungry Germans.  Instead of food, they found paintings, including some of the Schloss pieces.  So, in an ironic twist to the story, some of the paintings that the Nutty Nazis stole were stolen by hungry Germans.  While many of the paintings were recovered shortly after the war, 171 paintings from the Schloss catalogue were still missing as of 2015.  Every so often one of the works comes up for auction.  The legal team working for the recovery of the art has been able to intercede and have the work returned to the family.

A work from the Schloss collection may or may not be in storage at the Carnegie Museum of Art.  An investigator for the family came to Pittsburgh and made a visit to the Carnegie.  The investigator informed the curator that one of the works on display was part of the Schloss family collection.  The curator at the time denied the claim.  And, as it turns out, the curator was 100% correct. (The Carnegie’s Rembrandt was donated by a Pittsburgher attorney and financier who was instrumental in the formation in the State of Israel, Charles J. Rosenbloom.  His story is detailed HERE).

This story could only have gotten as far as a Schloss family investigator coming to Pittsburgh because of the prolific body of work of the artist with the impressive name of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn.

I was lucky that my guy was Vermeer.  At the time I started my quest, the available paintings were listed as 36 plus the empty frame The Concert was stolen from in Boston.  But Rembrandt’s catalogue is over 300 paintings plus an even higher number of sketches and drawings.  There are dozens of Rembrandt self-portraits (compare that to the two images of a male figure in Vermeer’s work that may be considered “self-portraits”).  As for the Elderly Jew in a Fur Hat, there are 13 paintings of a man wearing a fur hat.  Seven of the paintings are attributed to the Master himself and some are attributed to “Workshop of Rembrandt,” “Follower of Rembrandt,” “Manner of Rembrandt,” and “After Rembrandt”. 

The Schloss investigator did locate the actual Rembrandt stolen in 1943 in the Galerie Narodni (National Gallery of the Czech Republic) in Prague in 2002.  That painting was returned to the Schloss family.

So, no stolen Rembrandt at the Carnegie.  I can’t speak to any of the other paintings on display but no Schloss family painting is in Pittsburgh (none that we know of).

But one mystery does remain.

When the Schloss family investigator made the claim to the curator at the museum, the Elderly Jew came down off the wall and went into storage.  The curator at the time commented that they couldn’t prove the provenance of the piece and whether or not it was an actual Rembrandt.

If I was trying to market a museum, not only would I have this painting on display, I would be marketing it by telling the story you just read.  But the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh has decided not to do that.

I’ve attempted to ask that question to various museum employees and a member of the Board of Directors.  Nobody has felt the need to share the answer with me.  

So, while you can’t see the Elderly Jew at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, you can see him below.

One final Vermeer connection:  Adolphe Schloss once considered selling 60 of his paintings.  He wanted to get capital in order to buy a Vermeer painting.  Vermeer only came into art collectors’ collective mind in the late 19^th century.  The timing would have coincided with the years when Schloss was compiling his collection.  This is yet another of the hundreds of stories that make me glad I found Vermeer—or, as I often say, he found me.