A Signac from the Gurlitt trove, back with Lévy's heirs

In June 1940 Gaston Lévy, a Paris businessman and property developer, packed his belongings and had them taken from his Paris apartment to his house at Les Bouffards, in the Cher. Soon afterwards he left France with his family for Tunis. The Gurlitt Provenance Research Project, which is run under the German Lost Art Foundation, says witnesses described German authorities looting the collection at Les Bouffards in October 1940.

The painting in this story is a small Signac that was probably among them. Paul Signac made Quai de Clichy. Temps gris in the spring of 1887, an oil on canvas of 46 by 65.5 centimetres, inscribed Opus 156. It is no. 142 in Françoise Cachin’s catalogue of his paintings, and it was shown in Brussels and Paris in 1888. By 1927 it belonged to Lévy, who, Sotheby’s says, came to own forty-four Signac oils.

For this painting the project records only that it was probably seized at Les Bouffards, and it marks the next years as incompletely documented. Dealer records place it in the Paris trade in 1943: with Raphaël Gerard in August, then with a buyer named de la Chapelle, probably acting for Galerie Bénézit, in November. The project suggests the dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt may have acquired it from that gallery. By December 1947 it was with him, and it passed by descent to his son Cornelius.

The art hoard that Hildebrand Gurlitt left to his son came to light in 2012, and Cornelius Gurlitt died in 2014. In July 2019 his estate returned the painting to Lévy’s heirs. Sotheby’s says the work had been identified as looted by the Nazis.

One question stays open. The project notes that a small handcart in the foreground of the painting does not appear in the photograph printed in Cachin’s catalogue. It is unclear when, or by whom, that detail was added.

Sotheby’s offered the painting in London on 4 February 2020 as lot 13, with an estimate of 600,000 to 800,000 pounds. It was one of three works restituted to Lévy’s heirs in the same evening sale. The sources consulted for this entry do not give the sale price or name the buyer.