Peasants Conversing in an Interior

Adriaen van Ostade (Dutch, 1610–1684)

1671

Medium/TechniqueOil on panel

Dimensions44.5 × 37.5 cm (17 1/2 × 14 3/4 in.)

Credit LinePromised gift of Susan and Matthew Weatherbie, in support of the Center for Netherlandish Art

Accession numberL-T 198.9.2022

On View

Not on view

ClassificationsPaintings

Collections

Europe

ProvenanceNovember 10, 1801, anonymous sale, Amsterdam, possibly lot 9. By 1908, Joshua Charles Vanneck, 4th Baron Huntingfield (b. 1842– d. 1915), Heveningham Hall, Suffolk; June 25, 1915, posthumous Lord Huntingfield sale, Christie, Manson, and Woods, London, lot 105, sold for £262 to Morton (possibly bought in or bought back); March 18, 1918, Huntingfield estate and others sale, Mak, Amsterdam, lot 105. 1925, Jonas Lek, Brussels; March 31, 1925, Lek sale, Muller, Amsterdam, lot 65. 1927, Vicars Brothers, London. By 1937, Paul Graupe (b. 1881 – d. 1953), Paul Graupe et Cie., Paris [see note 1]; 1940, put by Paul Graupe into storage at Wacker and Bondy, Paris [see note 2]; February 19, 1941, sold by Arthur Goldschmidt (b. 1891 – d. 1960) to Karl Haberstock (b. 1878 – d. 1956), Berlin [see note 3]; April 2, 1941, sold by Haberstock to the Reich Chancellery for the Führermuseum (no. 1601); taken to Alt Aussee (1699/1); July 2, 1945, recovered by Allied forces and shipped to the Munich Central Collecting Point (no. 2355/1); June 25, 1946, shipped from the Munich Central Collecting Point to Paris; placed in the custody of the Office for Private Property and Interests; March 6, 1951, sold through the Salle des Ventes de l’Administration des Domaines, Paris, for fr. 705,000 [see note 4]. 1951, sold by M. O. Leegenhoek (dealer), Paris, to Matthiesen, Ltd., London; 1955, sold by Matthiesen to Gebr. Douwes, Amsterdam. 1958, art market, The Netherlands. 1992, sold by Johnny van Haeften (dealer), London, to Susan and Matthew Weatherbie, Boston.

NOTES:
[1] See “Notable Works of Art Now on the Market,” advertising supplement to Burlington Magazine, December 1937, n.p., plate X.

[2] By 1939, the three managers of the firm Paul Graupe et Cie. were Paul Graupe, Arthur Goldschmidt, and Käthe Simon. Graupe and his wife left France for Switzerland that year. The Paris gallery closed in June 1940, and a large number of works of art, including the Ostade, were moved by Goldschmidt and Simon to a storage facility called Wacker-Bondy. Goldschmidt and his wife moved to Cannes in the south of France in mid-1940.

[3] In early 1941, Goldschmidt began or had already begun a working relationship with dealer Karl Haberstock, an agent for Adolf Hitler who had received authorization to travel between the occupied and unoccupied zones of France. In February, 1941 Goldschmidt sold Haberstock the Ostade and a painting by Brouwer, as confirmed in handwritten receipt dated February 19. Haberstock had these paintings as early as February 9, however, when Hitler’s art advisor and curator, Hans Posse, reported that especially nice paintings by Brouwer and Ostade were for sale in Paris with Haberstock, who had already worked “for weeks” in the south of France.

[4] At the end of the war, the Ostade was identified as the former property of Arthur Goldschmidt and restituted to France. The Office for Private Property and Interests was an “ownerless art” collection from which restitution claims could be made. There is no evidence that either Goldschmidt or Graupe claimed the Ostade. The Office closed in 1949. A special commission was appointed to choose from those still-unclaimed works of art that were of interest to the French state. The works of art not selected by France for its museums, including the Ostade, were given over to a public auction house for sale.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Paul Graupe and Arthur Goldschmidt were Jewish art dealers and business partners. Between August and December 1940, as Graupe prepared to leave Europe, he wrote to Goldschmidt about his property held at Wacker-Bondy, and asked him “to try and save all that can be saved.” Graupe left Switzerland for Lisbon in December 1940, immigrating to the US in March 1941. Goldschmidt remained in the south of France until July 1941, when he fled for Cuba. In February and March 1941, Goldschmidt cabled Graupe that the stock from Wacker-Bondy was with him in France and that he intended to send paintings, including the Ostade, on to Graupe.

In October 1941, Goldschmidt wrote to Graupe that he had “by coincidence and ‘luck’” been able to sell the Ostade. He claimed that he made agreements with a group of “gangsters” to whom he turned over a group of Graupe’s paintings. Goldschmidt stated he was able to get them to release one picture—the Ostade—which he sold to raise money to secure the release of the others. He made no mention of the painting’s sale to Haberstock in early February.

Susan and Matthew Weatherbie and the MFA have reached out to representatives of the heirs of Graupe and Goldschmidt to resolve any issues regarding the painting’s ownership.