A Pennsylvania museum has agreed to sell a 16th-century portrait that once belonged to a Jewish family who were forced to give up the portrait when they fled Nazi Germany before World War II.
The Allentown Art Museum is going to hold an auction “Portrait of George the Bearded, Duke of Saxony,” settle a restitution claim from the heirs of its former owner, museum officials said Monday. The museum had purchased the painting, attributed to German Renaissance master Lucas Cranach the Elder and Workshop, from a New York gallery in 1961 and had displayed it since then.
The portrait belonged to Henry Bromberg, a judge in the Hamburg, Germany, district court who had inherited a large collection of Old Master paintings from his businessman father. Bromberg and his wife, Hertha Bromberg, endured years of Nazi persecution before leaving Germany in 1938, emigrating to the United States via Switzerland and France.
“While being persecuted and fleeing Nazi Germany, Henry and Hertha Bromberg had to part with their artworks by selling them through various art dealers, including the Cranach,” said their lawyer, Imke Gielen.
The Brombergs settled in New Jersey and later moved to Yardley, Pennsylvania.
Two years ago, their descendants approached the museum about the painting, and museum officials began negotiations for a settlement. Museum officials called the pending sale a fair and just resolution given the “ethical dimensions of the painting’s history in the Bromberg family.”
“This artwork came onto the market and ultimately into the museum only because Henry Bromberg had to flee persecution by Nazi Germany. That moral obligation compelled us to act,” Max Weintraub, the museum’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
The work, an oil on panel painted around 1534, will be sold in January at Christie’s Old Masters in New York. The museum and the family will split the proceeds under a settlement agreement. The exact terms were confidential.
One issue that came up during the interviews is when and where the painting was sold. The family believed the painting was sold under duress while the Brombergs were still in Germany. The museum said the investigation was inconclusive and that it may have been sold after they left.
That uncertainty “was the impetus for the compromise, rather than everyone defending their position and going to court,” said the museum’s attorney, Nicholas M. O’Donnell.
Christie’s said it would not be ready to provide an estimate of the portrait’s value until it could determine the attribution. Works by Cranach — the official painter to the Saxon court of Wittenberg and a friend of reformer Martin Luther — are generally worth more than those attributed to Cranach and his workshop. Cranach’s portrait of John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony, sold for $7.7 million in 2018. Another painting, attributed to Cranach and workshop, sold for about $1.1 million in 2009.
“It is exciting when a work by a rare and important Northern Renaissance master like Lucas Cranach the Elder becomes available, especially as a result of a just restitution. This painting has been publicly known for decades, but we took this opportunity to conduct new research, and it leads us to a preliminary conclusion that this was painted by Cranach with the assistance of his workshop,” Marc Porter, chairman of Christie’s Americas, said in a statement.
The Bromberg family has reached agreements with the private owners of two other works. The family is still hunting for about 80 other works believed to have been lost during Nazi persecution, said Gielen, the family’s lawyer.
“We are delighted that another painting from our grandparents’ art collection has been identified and are pleased that the Allentown Art Museum has carefully and responsibly verified the provenance of the portrait of George the Bearded, Duke of Saxony, as well as the circumstances under which Hendrik and Hertha Bromberg were forced to relinquish it during the Nazi period,” the Bromberg family said in a statement.