The shipwreck that surfaced at a Düsseldorf auction

Koekkoek’s 1841 painting shows a shipwreck off a rocky coast. Nearly a century after it was painted, it was among the stock of the Galerie Stern in Düsseldorf, run by the Jewish dealer Max Stern. The Nazi authorities compelled him to close the gallery. In November 1937 he put its remaining inventory, including the seascape, through auction at Lempertz in Cologne.

The work resurfaced at a different auction house in 2018. Someone in the European art trade alerted the Max Stern Art Restitution Project, which took the lead to researchers in Munich and to Hargesheimer Kunstauktionen, where the canvas was due to be offered. The New York Holocaust Claims Processing Office joined discussions with the auctioneer and the consignor.

The consignor agreed to the return, and the auction house compensated him, according to The Art Newspaper. On 19 November 2018 the painting was handed to representatives of the Max and Iris Stern Foundation and its university beneficiaries in Düsseldorf. Concordia identified it as the eighteenth work recovered for the foundation.