Germany agreed to return a Nazi-looted painting to the heirs of its Jewish owner.
A restitution agreement was signed for the painting “Two Riders on the Beach,” by Max Liebermann, which was discovered in the apartment of the late German art collector Cornelius Gurlitt. Its provenance was traced to businessman David Friedmann, who kept a valuable art collection in his Breslau home.
The deal, which must be approved by a Munich court, reportedly was the first restitution agreement to be signed for a piece from Gurlitt’s collection of some 1,400 works that were confiscated from his Munich home in 2012.
Gurlitt’s father was an art dealer on assignment to the Nazis. When he died in 1956, his son inherited the impressive collection. — jta