Turner's Glaucus and Scylla, restituted to the Jaffé heirs

On 12 and 13 July 1943, at the Savoy in Nice, the Vichy authorities sold the contents of Anna Jaffé’s home as Jewish property. She had died in Nice on 7 March 1942. Her will left her property to three nephews and a niece, but the authorities disregarded it. Among the paintings sold was J. M. W. Turner’s Glaucus and Scylla. It went for 28,000 francs, according to the record kept by the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. The museum later said that more than 60 paintings from the family were scattered.

Turner had shown the picture at the Royal Academy in London in 1841. It passed through several London owners and reached Charles Sedelmeyer’s gallery in Paris. John and Anna Jaffé of Nice acquired it from that gallery around 1902. When John died in 1933, Artdaily reports, he left it to Anna.

After the Nice sale the trail goes quiet. The Kimbell’s record picks up in 1956, when the Paris dealer Emile Leitz sold the painting to Agnew’s in London. It then went to Howard Young Galleries in New York. The Kimbell Art Foundation bought it in 1966 from Newhouse Galleries, whose records did not mention the Jaffés.

The family’s side of the story took decades. Christie’s says the heirs began recovering paintings only in 2005, after more than sixty years. The Kimbell reports that the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs had already restituted two other pictures to them, a Guardi and a Teniers. Alain Monteagle, acting for the heirs of Anna Jaffé’s three nephews and her niece, spent about two years on the Turner’s history. The Kimbell says its own research supported his claim. On 20 December 2006 the museum announced that it was returning the painting.

It was then offered at Christie’s in New York on 19 April 2007 as lot 122. The Kimbell bought it back. The museum’s record now reads “restituted to the heirs of Anna Jaffé in 2006”, and its credit line notes the reacquisition in 2007. The sources consulted do not give the price paid.