National Gallery Painting was Once Owned by Hitler

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The gallery acquired the painting in the 1960s from a New York dealer, who told them that the work had been in the same family since 1909. Actually, the painting had come to the dealer from Patricia Lochridge Hartwell, an American reporter who received the painting as a gift from a U.S. commander because she wrote a positive piece about the local military administration. The work was originally removed from Hitler's Munich apartment during the war to protect it from air raids, and it ended up in a depot in southern Germany.

Art historian Brigit Schwartz is responsible for making the discovery after stumbling upon a photo album of pictures of Hitler's paintings while researching the dictator's art collection at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. The discovery raises the question of whether the painting was forcibly taken from a Jewish collector, and the National Gallery has asked anyone with any evidence to step forward. If proof were to be found, the gallery would have to return the work to its legal owners.