Matisse's Odalisque, returned to the Stern heirs

On 19 July 1941, in occupied Amsterdam, the Stedelijk Museum bought a small painting by Henri Matisse. The invoice came from Lieuwe Bangma, the Dutch agent of a Berlin clothing firm. It asked for 5,000 guilders, which the museum’s own record says excludes tax. Bangma asked for the money to go to his own account. The painting was Odalisque, an oil on canvas of about 61 by 74 centimetres, dated 1920-21.

Its owner was Albert Stern, born in 1861. He was a textile maker and, in 1888, a founder of Graumann & Stern, one of the largest women’s clothing makers in Germany. In 1907 he married Marie Ebstein, who had studied art in Munich. The Restitutions Committee, the Dutch body that gives binding opinions on Nazi-era claims, says she was the main force behind their collection. The Committee found the Sterns owned the painting by 1930 and thinks it plausible that they bought it from Alfred Flechtheim, a Berlin dealer. Two Flechtheim labels are on the back. Albert Stern lent it to his 1930 exhibition, where the catalogue dated it 1923. The Committee accepts it as the same painting.

After January 1933 the family was persecuted for being Jewish and lost its livelihood and property in stages. Their Berlin house was sold far below its value, and the firm was liquidated in 1938. Marie moved to the Netherlands in 1936 and Albert followed in 1937. They took Haitian citizenship on 3 May 1940, hoping to leave, but the transit visas failed. By 15 May 1940 Albert had given the Stedelijk three paintings to keep safe: the Matisse, a Munch and a Van Gogh. A museum note of 18 October 1940 shows the three registered in Bangma’s name.

The museum invoice is from Bangma, not from Stern. The Committee read the sale as Albert Stern’s own, made through Bangma. Bangma was not Jewish and could use his bank accounts freely, and the Stern papers show goods passed to him to avoid seizure. Around 18 July 1941 Albert wrote to his brother Isidor in the United States that food was short and furniture was being sold. They left their Amsterdam flat on 5 August. The Committee called the link between the Sterns and the sale “highly likely”. It found it “sufficiently plausible” that the loss was involuntary, a sale made out of necessity under the measures against Jews. Marie, in letters of 1951 and 1952, said the family got under a third of the value. That figure is her own claim. No source accuses Bangma. The Committee describes him as protecting the family: he hid their infant granddaughter in 1942.

The Sterns were sent to Westerbork, a transit camp in the Netherlands, in early 1944. In March Albert was sent to Laufen, in Germany, and Marie to Liebenau. Albert died at Laufen on 18 January 1945, aged 83. Their sons Erich and Rudolf were killed, at Auschwitz in October 1944 and at Buchenwald in March 1945. Marie survived and reached Manchester; she died in 1952. Their daughter Eva, their son Wilhelm and two grandchildren also survived.

The museum flagged doubts about the painting in 2013 and 2015. On 5 April 2023 the heirs and Amsterdam City Council asked the Committee for a binding opinion. On 27 May 2024 it advised the City to return the painting to the legal successors of Albert and Marie Stern. The Art Newspaper reports that the heirs said the decision gave their grandfather “symbolic justice”. The Stedelijk announced the return on 22 November 2024. The sources do not say where the painting is now.