The Art Institute of Chicago says it will return Jean Metzinger’s 1913 Cubist painting Woman with a Fan to descendants of Emanuel Lewenstein, a Jewish collector whose family was persecuted under Nazi rule in the Netherlands. The museum determined that the painting entered a 1940 sale as a result of that persecution, although the precise circumstances of the sale and the identity of the consignor remain unclear, The Art Newspaper reported.
Evidence from the painting and archives
The provenance inquiry turned on a small mark on the painting’s reverse. Infrared imaging revealed the name Paul Citroen, which was not readily legible to the naked eye. Citroen sold the painting to Emanuel Lewenstein in 1928; together with documents found in Dutch archives, the inscription linked the work to the Lewenstein collection, according to WBEZ Chicago and The Art Newspaper.
Researchers matched the painting to a 1940 auction catalog and a Dutch newspaper account by comparing the published dimensions. The museum’s provenance records trace later transfers through Karl Alexander Legat in The Hague, Galerie Ariel in Paris and the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York. The Art Institute acquired the painting in 1959 through a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Sigmund Kunstadter.
Return arrangements
The standards behind restitution decisions
According to the U.S. National Archives, an international research portal was created to advance the 1998 Washington Conference Principles and related declarations by making records on Nazi-era cultural property more publicly accessible. An Art Institute of Chicago publication describes the Washington principles as a legally nonbinding framework that helped establish more rigorous, scientifically grounded provenance practices in museums. The Art Institute’s deaccession policy says an object may be removed from the permanent collection when the museum’s possession may be inconsistent with applicable law or when the object may be subject to repatriation or restitution. That policy provides the institutional basis for returning works when provenance research raises those concerns.
The painting has been removed from public display while the museum works with art handlers to send it to the living heirs. The family is represented by a Toronto-based firm that specializes in recovering art and cultural property looted or stolen during the Holocaust, WBEZ reported. Jacques Schuhmacher, the Art Institute’s executive director of provenance research, said the conclusion followed archival work conducted after the inscription was identified.
The case also reflects the Art Institute’s broader provenance effort, which expanded after the museum appointed Schuhmacher to lead the work in 2024. The museum has said it will return objects when new information indicates that they should go back, and spokesperson Megan Michienzi confirmed that Woman with a Fan is no longer on view, according to WBEZ.
Separate dispute involving a Schiele drawing
The Metzinger decision is separate from the Art Institute’s continuing dispute over Egon Schiele’s 1916 drawing Russian War Prisoner. A New York appellate court ruled that investigators had used a criminal seizure law improperly in an ownership dispute, allowing the drawing to remain at the museum while the matter proceeds through civil litigation, The New York Times reported. The museum maintains that it bought the Schiele legally, while the Metzinger research led it to conclude that the painting was forcibly sold during Nazi persecution.
