Tate Britain to return painting looted by Nazis

Tate Britain is set to return a 17th Century painting to the family of a Jewish Belgian art collector, after it was taken from his home by Nazis during World War Two.

Painter Henry Gibbs’ 1654 work, Aeneas And His Family Fleeing Burning Troy, was taken by the Nazis as “an act of racial persecution”, said the Spoliation Advisory Panel, which which looks into cases of looted artworks.

The panel resolves claims from people, or their heirs, who lost possession of cultural property during the Nazi era, which is now held in national collections in the UK.

The heirs and great-grandchildren of art collector Samuel Hartveld will now receive the work, which he left in Antwerp, Belgium in 1940, while fleeing the country with his wife, the UK Government said.

Arts Minister Sir Chris Bryant praised the panel for “helping to reunite families with their most treasured possessions”, calling it “the right decision”.

The painting, which is not currently displayed by the Tate, depicts scenes from Virgil’s epic Latin poem the Aeneid, and is believed to be a commentary on the English Civil War.

It was bought by the Tate collection from the Galerie Jan de Maere in Brussels in 1994, after Rene van den Broeck had purchased Mr Hartveld’s collection and home for a “paltry sum”, the panel said.

He survived the war but was never reunited with his collection of artworks, which many believed to be in galleries around Europe.

Last year, the Sonia Klein Trust – established by Mr Hartveld’s heirs – launched a claim.

Now in a new statement the trustees said they were “deeply grateful” over the decision to return the artwork, a move which acknowledges the “awful Nazi persecution of Samuel Hartveld”.

Tate director Maria Balshaw said it was “a profound privilege to help reunite this work with its rightful heirs” and that she was “delighted to see the spoliation process working successfully to make this happen”.

“Although the artwork’s provenance was extensively investigated when it was acquired in 1994, crucial facts concerning previous ownership of the painting were not known.”

She went on to say she was looking forward to presenting the painting back to the trust in the the coming months.