Paris: The French government says it will return a Nazi-looted Gustav Klimt landscape painting to its rightful owners more than 80 years after it was stolen from a Jewish family in Austria in 1938.
The colourful 1905 oil work by the Austrian symbolist painter titled Rosebushes under the Trees has been hanging in Paris’ Musee d’Orsay for decades.
French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin told a Paris news conference on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) ”the decision to return a major work from the public collections illustrates our commitment to the duty of justice and reparation vis-a-vis plundered families.”
The painting will be returned to the family of Nora Stiasny, a Holocaust victim who was dispossessed during a forced sale in August 1938.
Bachelot-Narquin said French authorities hadn’t initially identified the painting as being stolen by the Nazis, and its provenance only recently came to light after French government-led investigations.
“It is in recent years that the true origin of the painting has been established,” she said, adding that it was “the only Gustav Klimt painting owned by France”.
Read the article in The Sydney Morning Herald (AP).