Getting the Nazi stolen art back
Updated on 27 March 2007
A retired librarian has spent the last 14 years searching for an art collection stolen from his grandfather by the Nazis.
Uri Peled, a retired librarian from Tel Aviv, has one mission in life - to find the old master drawings looted by the Nazis from his grandfather.
Such has been his tenacity, he's tracked down old master drawings, owned by his grandfather in the Czech Republic, Belgium, Holland, America - and in Britain.
Mr Peled tracked down four drawings to the British Museum. The Commission for Looted Art in Europe, based in London, represented his case against the British Museum, in 2002.
It took four years to resolve, and involved the Attorney General, the High Court and a body called the Spoliation Advisory Panel.
Uri Peled's grandfather, Arthur Feldmann, was a Jewish lawyer in the Czech Republic. His fate was sealed when the Nazis invaded.
The Feldmann collection - of some 750 old master drawings - was confiscated from his villa. Uri Peled has so far retrieved over 150 of them, mostly from the Czech Republic.
Three of four drawings found in the British Museum were originally sold as a job lot at Sotheby's in London in 1946 for £9.
Uri Peled didn't get the drawings back but was given compensation of £175,000 by the British government. He was delighted when the British Museum put on a small exhibition of the drawings.
Returning art
The last few years have proved an extraordinary time for art restitution.
Recent returns of note have been part of Jacques Goudstikker's collection - with an estimated value of perhaps more than $100m - to his family in New York, Klimt's portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, returned to her niece after a seven year fight in the Austrian courts, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Berlin Street Scene, restituted to British Communist Party chairman Anita Halpin.
The Klimt was sold last year for $135m, the Kirchner for £20 million, and part of the Goudstikker collection will be up for auction this Spring at Christies.
Auction houses have clearly seen business potential in these cases, setting up dedicated restitution departments with specialist lawyers and art 'detectives' in their employ.
Read more here
Other looted art in British collections
Mr Peled is not alone; we have other works of art, looted during the Second World War, in our national collections. Not many, it's true, but a few of note: an 18th century view of Hampton Court in Tate Britain, a medieval manuscript in the British Library, and a masterpiece by Lucas Cranach the Elder in the National Gallery.
Descendants of the original Jewish owner of the Hampton Court painting were given compensation of £125,000.
An Italian monastery has asked the British Library for its medieval manuscript back, the plan is to return it - but only on loan.
"I governed Berchtesgaden. For a day, the army invited me to take charge of Hiltler's home town. No gag. Honest."Patricia Lochridge
The Cranach painting in the National Gallery remains unclaimed ... but the more we learn about its history the more intriguing it becomes.
The Art Newspaper originally broke the story last November. The American journalist who took the painting home was "a fearless girl reporter" for Woman's Home Companion.
Like Hilary Clinton, Patricia Lochridge was a Wellesley girl. She had connections. She knew Eleanor Roosevelt. She celebrated the end of the war, with a scoop.
She said: "I governed Berchtesgaden. For a day, the army invited me to take charge of Hiltler's home town. No gag. Honest."
The American commanding officer evidently took a shine to her. She was photographed burning Nazi flags and she posed with a supposed Vermeer, found in Goering's villa.
She said: "As governor, I found I was responsible for the safety of Goering's one hundred million dollars' worth of stolen art. The treasures had been removed from Goering's home and stored in wooden buildings for cataloguing and restoring."
Pat Lochridge was evidently given a free hand to take her pick. She took the Cranach - both beautiful and portable. Again for Woman's Home Companion she reminisced about VE Day.
After the war, Pat Lochridge continued to work in journalism. We dug up an article from a newspaper called ' The Arizonian ' from 1962. And given what we now know, her comments on art seem somewhat shameless.
"Hardly anyone any more stands awed before the Mona Lisa, as if this were the Mecca of painting. It isn't , and everybody seems to have discovered that there may be far more fun in a Venus and Cupid by Cranach"
She neglected to mention that she had one.
A year later, in 1963, using a New York dealer, she sold her Cranach to the National Gallery for £34,000. The Gallery wasn't told how she'd come to acquire it.
Pat Lochridge died in 1998, aged 82. One of her four sons recently came forward to tell the National Gallery the true story.
So who owned the Cranach before Lochridge, before Goering, before the war?
If there is a genuine claimant out there somewhere, compensation would have to run into millions.
