The Naples evening that slipped out of the catalogue

In the surviving photograph, a cluster of figures gathers beneath the trees while evening falls over Naples. The signature recorded by the Max Stern Art Restitution Project ends in “87”. The Düsseldorf gallery had displayed the painting in its 1935 exhibition of old and modern masters, where it was listed as number 120.

In November 1937 the same painting appeared as the third lot in the Lempertz catalogue for the liquidation of Max Stern’s stock. The Nazi authorities had forced Stern, a Jewish dealer, to give up his gallery. The presence of the canvas in the auction book documents the offer, but the project explains why the surviving catalogues cannot by themselves identify a buyer or establish whether an individual lot sold.

The project retains the painting in its missing inventory. Its archival photograph and artist inscription are useful together: the 1935 exhibition catalogue and later auction entry record slightly different heights for the same width. A future identification would need to account for that discrepancy and establish the ownership history.