A Max Liebermann oil painting that vanished for decades in the secret art hoard of Cornelius Gurlitt will get its first public viewing in June in advance of an auction for the work, which once belonged to a Jewish industrialist.
The painting, “Two Riders on the Beach,” is one of the first two works from the clandestine collection that were returned earlier this month to the families of the original owners. Sotheby’s in London is offering the 1901 painting for sale on June 24 and estimates that it could fetch as much as $850,000.
Now is the moment for the painting to “pass into a new phase of its story,” David Toren, the great-nephew of the owner, David Friedmann, said in a statement.
It is a tale that has had many twists and turns. Mr. Toren, who lives now in New York, last saw the painting when he was 13, the day after Kristallnacht in 1938. It was hanging in the conservatory of his uncle’s country estate in Germany on the day that Mr. Friedmann, a brick factory owner, was forced to sign over his home to a Nazi general.
The painting was sold by Nazi authorities after Mr. Friedmann’s death of natural causes in 1942 and ended up in the hands of Hildebrandt Gurlitt, a Nazi-era art dealer. Three years later, the painting was seized by the “Monuments Men” unit for the allies and stored in Wiesbaden. But because of missing documentation, the painting was returned to Mr. Gurlitt in 1950 and ultimately hung on a wall in the Munich apartment of his son, Cornelius Gurlitt.
Cornelius Gurlitt, who died last May at 81, spent most of his life hiding a collection of more than 1,000 paintings, watercolors and sketches amassed by his father.
Mr. Toren said he is the only living heir who actually saw the painting. “I am 90 years old now and blind,” he said. “So while the return of the painting after so many years is of huge personal significance, I can no longer appreciate the painting as I did all those years ago in my great-uncle’s home.”