STOCKHOLM—Sweden’s Moderna Museet and the heirs to a prized Emil Nolde painting that was stolen by the Nazis have reached an agreement that settles a 70-year-old battle. The parties released a statement saying a private collector had agreed to purchase the work, loan it to the Moderna Museet for five years, and then loan a series of other, undisclosed paintings to the museum for another five years. The lawyer for the heirs had previously pegged the value of the 1917 Nolde work, Blumengarten (Utenwarf) (Flower Garden (Utenwarf)), at $4 million, though neither side disclosed the terms of the sale price.

The painting had been confiscated by the Nazi government from the collection of Otto Nathan Deutsch, a German Jew who escaped to the Netherlands in the late ’30s. In 1967 it was sold to Moderna Museet. The negotiations began in 2002 when the heirs, two of whom lived in concentration camps as children, appealed to Swedish Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth for the painting's return.

Efforts to reclaim paintings seized by the Nazis have been boosted in recent years by the widespread adoption of the Washington Conference Principles, a set of guidelines adopted by 44 countries that outlines procedures for dealing with reclamation cases. In June, the Jewish Claims Conference, which studies the agreement's implementation, listed Sweden with countries “that do not appear to have made significant progress.” Successful restitution agreements have become regular news recently and are likely to continue doing so for some time. The Jewish Claims Conference estimates that the Nazis stole around 650,000 works of art. Many pieces, including another Nolde owned by Deutsche, remain missing.

Read more at Bloomberg.