Franz Marc's Foxes: sold in exile, returned in 2022

On 30 April 1939 Kurt Grawi wrote a letter from Brussels about a painting. Grawi, a German stockbroker and businessman who was persecuted for his Jewish descent, was on his way out of Germany. The painting was Franz Marc’s The Foxes, made in 1913. It was in Paris, waiting to be shipped to New York and sold. The Advisory Commission on the return of Nazi-confiscated cultural property, the German body that advises on such claims, quotes the letter. Grawi wanted the sale to go ahead “despite the unfavourable times”. The money, he wrote, would be the “basis for our emigration”.

Grawi had bought the picture in 1928 from the dealer Max Leon Flemming. Christie’s provenance traces it back through the collector Franz Kluxen and the gallery Der Sturm to Marc’s widow, Maria Marc. After the November 1938 pogrom, Grawi was held for several weeks in the Sachsenhausen camp. He left Germany at the end of April 1939 and reached Santiago de Chile on 4 June with 10 Reichsmark. His wife Else Grawi and two sons followed in December.

The painting went by Le Havre to New York. According to the City of Düsseldorf, Ernst Simon received it there on 4 May 1939 and offered it to the Museum of Modern Art. The museum offered 800 dollars in January 1940. Grawi set a limit of 1,250 dollars, and no sale followed. Between February and September 1940 the picture was sold through the dealer Karl Nierendorf to the film director William Dieterle and his wife Charlotte. The price is unknown. The sources allege no wrongdoing by Simon, Nierendorf or the Dieterles.

Kurt Grawi died in exile on 5 September 1944. In 1962 the businessman Helmut Horten gave the painting to the collection of the City of Düsseldorf, now held by the Museum Kunstpalast. On 5 February 2015 the heirs of Kurt and Else Grawi asked the city to return it. The city’s position was that the sale took place in New York, outside the reach of the Nazi state, at a price in the usual range, and that Grawi could use the proceeds freely. The heirs saw a sale forced by flight. In autumn 2018 both sides agreed to put the case to the Commission.

On 10 February 2021 the Commission voted six to three to advise return. It found that the 1940 sale followed directly from Grawi’s imprisonment and flight, and that the place of sale mattered less. It thought a fair price was probably paid, but said this did not change the result. It added that Düsseldorf had said it would have returned the work had the sale been in Germany. The city council voted unanimously on 29 April 2021 to return it. The city handed the painting to the heirs at the Kunstpalast on 11 January 2022.

Christie’s announced on 28 January 2022 that it would offer the work. It sold at Christie’s London on 1 March 2022, lot 34, for 42,654,500 pounds, including the buyer’s premium. Christie’s says this was a record for Marc at auction. The sources read for this entry do not name the buyer or say where the painting hangs today.