MFA Boston Fights Restitution Claim for Kokoschka Painting

BOSTON—A number of Holocaust historians are criticizing the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for its position on a restitution claim regarding Oskar Kokoschka's 1913 painting Two Nudes (Lovers), the Boston Globe reports. The painting depicts the artist with Alma Mahler, the wife of composer Gustav Mahler, with whom Kokoschka had an affair, and has hung at the MFA almost continuously since 1973.

In March 2007, lawyers for Claudia Seger-Thomschitz approached the MFA with their client's claim that the painting is rightfully hers. Seger-Thomschitz is the heir to the Jewish art collector Oskar Reichel, and she claims that Reichel sold the painting under duress in Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1939. But the MFA refused to return the work, insisting that the painting never passed through Nazi hands and that Reichel sold it voluntarily. The museum conducted its own research into the provenance of the work and presented it to Seger-Thomschitz's lawyers, requesting that she drop her claim. She refused, and the MFA in turn filed a suit against her in January in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts in order to establish ownership of the painting.

Tomorrow, Seger-Thomschitz will file a counterclaim that includes two documents meant to prove ownership: Reichel's itemized property declaration to the Nazis in June 1938, which lists Two Nudes, and a 2003 report by Viennese authorities explaining the persecution of Reichel's family at the hands of the Nazis. His business and home were confiscated during World War II, and both his wife and one of his sons were sent to concentration camps, where his son died.

The MFA's legal filing contends that Reichel sold Two Nudes voluntarily to art dealer Otto Kallir, also a Jew, and that Reichel had previously consigned the painting to Kallir for sale three times. But a number of Holocaust historians have taken issue with the claim, saying that the Reichel would not have had a choice on the matter, given the circumstances in Nazi-occupied Vienna.

Another work that passed through Kallir's hands is also currently in dispute: Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, philanthropist David Bakalar has filed a suit in District Court in New York in order to prove his ownership of a 1917 Egon Schiele watercolor that he bought from Kallir in 1963. The lawyer representing Bakalar's opponents says that Kallir's orchestration of the sale of a painting between a Nazi collector and a Nazi museum official, as well as his departure from Nazi-occupied Austria by the time of the Kokoschka sale, February 1939, shows that Kallir had Nazi connections.

Kallir's granddaughter, the art dealer Jane Kallir, says that the Nazi sale did take place, but that her grandfather was most likely forced to orchestrate it. Regarding the Kokoschka painting, she told the Globe that the "historical documents demonstrate a long-running art-dealing relationship between the Reichels and my grandfather... It was not a situation where Reichel suddenly said, 'I need to get these off my walls and turn them into cash.'"

The MFA declined to allow Victoria Reed, the museum's curatorial research fellow for provenance who conducted the nine-month study of the history of the Kokoschka painting, to comment. It also would not release detailed materials from her report, saying, "The results of the museum's research are clearly outlined in its legal filing, which is publicly available and was shared with the Boston Globe."