A Signac of the Golden Horn returned by France

In June 1940, as German forces arrived in Paris, the collector Gaston Lévy sent part of his collection to his country house at Brinon-sur-Sauldre. Lévy was a Paris businessman and property developer. Around October 1940, the state’s database records, German soldiers seized works from the house, according to a guard who later swore a statement. This Signac is not named on any list of what was taken, but the French Ministry of Culture says it was seized in France by the occupying forces.

The painting is La Corne d’Or. Matin, an oil on canvas of 73 by 92 centimetres, signed and dated 1907. Signac first travelled to Istanbul in the spring of 1907, and the Golden Horn, an estuary beside the city’s port, inspired twelve paintings. Sotheby’s says this was the only view of Istanbul he chose to show at the Salon des Indépendants in 1908. Lévy bought it on 10 June 1927.

Its wartime route is partly documented. Sotheby’s gives the seizure to the ERR, the Nazi art-looting unit Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, and the state record notes that the ERR registered the painting in June 1943 without any link to Lévy. Allied forces later found it at Kogl castle, and it reached the Allied Munich Central Collecting Point on 21 March 1946. It was returned to France on 25 September 1947.

After that the trail breaks. The ministry says the painting vanished in circumstances that remain unknown, so it was never returned to Lévy. The state record adds that Lévy, then abroad, did not claim it from France’s recovery commission, but listed it among his losses in a claim to the German authorities, which suggests he never got it back. Sotheby’s provenance lists a transfer by the French government in 1949, and the state record says French customs seized the painting on 23 April 1988 while it was being taken out of the country without permission.

In 2000 the work was assigned to the Musée d’Orsay. Research by the ministry, the museum and the diplomatic archives, with documents from the heirs, then clarified its history. The painting left the museum’s inventory, and on 26 July 2018 the ministry announced its restitution to Lévy’s heirs. The state record classes it as certainly despoiled.

Sotheby’s offered it in London on 4 February 2020 as lot 12, estimated at 5 million to 7 million pounds. It was one of three restituted works in that evening sale. The Art Newspaper reports that it sold, for 7.6 million pounds including fees. The sources consulted do not name the buyer or say where the painting is now.