The Courbet hidden in a Budapest bank vault

Baron Ferenc Hatvany, a Hungarian Jewish painter and collector, owned several works by Gustave Courbet. As wartime danger increased, he dispersed part of his collection across banks in Budapest. The foundation identifies this particular Wave as a 70-by-102-centimetre canvas deposited at the Hungarian General Credit Bank in 1942 under the name János Horváth, deposit 13158.

Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944. Hatvany survived in hiding while SS officers took over his villa and the works left there were looted. After Soviet forces captured Budapest in 1945, the contents of the bank vaults were removed. The documentation does not establish who ultimately took possession of The Wave.

Hatvany recovered other works after the war, including Courbet’s L’Origine du monde. The continuing search concerns this specific seascape. Courbet painted several waves, making the dimensions, archival image and bank deposit important for distinguishing Hatvany’s canvas from paintings of the same subject.