The Constable whose export permit stalled its return

John Constable’s small oil sketch shows a boat being drawn onto the Brighton shore. Baron Ferenc Hatvany, a Hungarian Jewish collector and painter, acquired it in Paris in 1908. A British panel concluded that it was likely still his when German forces occupied Hungary in 1944 and that it was taken in the course of persecution. The picture reached Tate through a gift in 1986.

The United Kingdom’s Spoliation Advisory Panel recommended a return in 2014, and Tate accepted the advice. The museum then received a copy of a Hungarian export licence dated 17 December 1946 and paused the handover. The document raised a specific question: had Hatvany recovered the picture after the war, then arranged for it to leave Hungary?

In 2015 the panel concluded that the research had found no link between Hatvany and the people named on the licence. It considered it more likely that he had never recovered the picture and reaffirmed its recommendation. Tate returned the painting to the heirs in 2016. They later offered it at Christie’s, whose catalogue records the restitution.