Vermeer's The Astronomer: taken from the Rothschilds

In 1940, in occupied Paris, German authorities seized a small Vermeer from the collection of Edouard de Rothschild. The Louvre says it was taken for Hitler’s planned museum at Linz. The seizure was part of the Nazi persecution of the Rothschild family. The sources read for this entry do not give the day or the place where the painting was taken.

The picture is The Astronomer, an oil on canvas of about 51.5 by 45.5 centimetres. Johannes Vermeer signed and dated it in Delft in 1668. It was sold at auction several times between 1713 and 1800, often together with its companion, The Geographer, now in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. The two were split for the first time at the Gildemeester sale in Amsterdam on 11 June 1800. The Astronomer was sold in Paris at the Louis Double sale on 30 May 1881. The dealer Léon Gauchez bought it for Baron Alphonse de Rothschild (1827-1905), whom he advised on art. It was in Alphonse’s hands by 1888. His son Edouard (1868-1949) owned it next.

The Louvre records only that German authorities took it. The ERR project database, which is compiled from US and German archive records, names the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. This was the Nazi unit that looted Jewish-owned cultural goods in occupied Europe, and Alfred Rosenberg led it. The database card lists Edouard de Rothschild as the owner. It says the painting went from the German Embassy in Paris to the Jeu de Paume, a Paris museum that the unit used from 1 November 1940 as its depot. It was to pass through Hermann Goering, a senior Nazi official, to Hitler. Le Nouvel Observateur reports that it was seized from November 1940 with 5,002 other items.

The Star Tribune, citing Hector Feliciano’s book The Lost Museum, reports that Rosenberg wrote to Hitler’s aide Bormann that a report would bring Hitler “great joy”. The paper says the Vermeer was among the Rothschild works named. The painting left Paris for Germany on 3 February 1941, according to the Star Tribune and Le Nouvel Observateur. Le Nouvel Observateur says it was then kept at Neuschwanstein castle and later in the Altaussee salt mine in Austria. The Star Tribune says Allied “Monuments Men” found it there in May 1945, with more than 8,000 other works.

The sources differ on the return. The Louvre gives the year 1946 for its return to Edouard de Rothschild. The Star Tribune and Der Spiegel say 1945. It was shown at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris in 1946. Guy de Rothschild (1909-2007), Edouard’s son, owned it next.

In 1982 Guy chose to give it to France by dation en paiement. In this French system an heir pays a tax debt with a work of art. The committee met on 30 September 1982, the council on 6 October, and the ministries approved it on 13 October. An order of 30 June 1983 completed the transfer. It was the last Vermeer in private hands and the second in French national collections, after The Lacemaker. Der Spiegel reported on 26 June 1983 that the arrangement also let the family sell two Goya paintings and a Frans Hals abroad. A dation is not a sale, and no value or price appears in the sources read.

The Astronomer hangs in room 837 of the Louvre. It was lent to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in October 2009, which the Star Tribune says was its first visit to the United States.