The Nice auction France revisited eighty years later

Armand Dorville, a Jewish lawyer and collector, died in 1941 in the part of France administered by Vichy. His executor put the collection up for sale with the heirs’ agreement. On the opening day of the Nice auction, 24 June 1942, the authorities appointed a provisional administrator under the antisemitic regime. The national museums acquired eleven drawings and a wax sculpture.

The sale proceeds were tied up during the occupation. Five members of the family were arrested in 1944 and murdered at Auschwitz. The surviving heirs received the proceeds in the postwar settlement of the estate. Decades later, the French compensation commission found that the sale itself did not meet its definition of spoliation, but recommended a return on equitable grounds after considering the persecution and the blocked funds.

The works had entered public collections and needed a legal route out. A law of 21 February 2022 removed the twelve objects from the national collections and authorised their handover. The culture ministry’s activity report records returns on 13 May and 3 June. The Louvre register identifies Constantin Guys’s Cavaliers et amazones, shown here, as one of the works handed to the heirs’ representative on 13 May.