Edgar Degas
Landscape with
Smokestacks,1890

landscape
with plunder
by Judd Tully

A chilling tale of Nazi war loot, a 
murdered Jewish couple and a small Degas 
pastel currently owned by a prominent 
American collector has surfaced in a 
recently filed federal court case. 
Embracing complex issues involving the 
intersection of the international art 
market and the Holocaust, the lawsuit
is destined to attract worldwide attention. 
The art work in question, Landscape with 
Smokestacks, a 1890 monotype with pastel by 
Edgar Degas, looked perfectly respectable 
when it was exhibited at the Metropolitan 
Museum's 1994 exhibition, "Degas 
Landscapes." On loan from Chicago 
collectors Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Searle, the 
work reproduced beautifully in Richard 
Kendall's accompanying full-color 
catalogue.
That impression faded some last July, after 
a civil action complaint was filed in the 
U.S. District Court, Southern District of 
New York, charging that the Degas was 
actually the property of the heirs of 
Friedrich Bernhard Gutmann and his wife, 
Louise Gutmann, a prominent Jewish couple 
killed by the Nazis during the World War 
II. The Searles' answer to the complaint is 
due Sept. 27. It is expected that their 
legal team, headed by Ralph E. Lerner of 
Sidley & Austin, will also request a 
change of venue to Chicago, where the 
Searles reside.
According to court papers filed by Nick and 
Simon Goodman, grandsons of the Gutmanns, 
and Lili Vera Collas Gutmann, the Gutmann's 
surviving daughter, the Degas pastel had 
been acquired in the late 1920s from 
Helmuth Lutjens, the Dutch agent for the 
Berlin art dealer Paul Cassierer & Co., 
and had hung in the Gutmann's elegant 
drawing room in Heemstede, Holland, until 
1939. 
At that time, fearing for their lives, the 
family sent the Degas and a number of other 
works for safekeeping to Paul Graupe & Cie, 
a prominent antiques dealer in Paris. Other 
art was sold by the family to finance their 
escape, according to Thomas R. Kline of 
Andrews & Kurth, one of the Goodman's 
lawyers. Attempting to flee Holland, both 
Friedrich and Louise were detained by the 
Gestapo while en route to Italy. Louise 
perished in the gas chambers at Auschwitz 
and her husband was believed to have been 
beaten to death after refusing to sign a 
document transferring some of the family's 
valuable possessions to the Third Reich 
(Gutmann was an heir to the founder of the 
Dresden Bank).
After the war, the Gutmann children, 
Bernard (now deceased) and his sister Lili, 
learned that the Graupe & Cie. had 
deposited the works in a Paris warehouse 
that was subsequently looted by Hitler's 
infamous Rosenberg Action Team, the Nazi 
bureau dedicated to stealing Jewish 
property. The Gutmann heirs then notified 
Dutch, British and German authorities and 
Interpol about their stolen art works. 
Exhaustive investigations on the Paris 
looting frenzy undertaken after the War 
by the ERR (the German acronym for the
Rosenberg gang) by French authorities and others 
verified the Gutmann pictures had indeed 
been stolen by the ERR. In an exclusive 
phone interview in Florence, Lili Gutmann, 
a retired freelance writer, told ArtNet she 
had photographic evidence that the monotype 
had been stored at the Louvre's Jeu du 
Paume and that the museum's wartime curator, Rose 
Valland, who was a double-agent spying on 
the Germans, had documented the stolen art works. 
The museum was used as a storehouse for the 
ERR.
The alleged paper trail of the Degas 
begins in Paris after its interval 
at the Louvre. It connects the pastel to 
Hans Wendland, a Berlin art dealer and Nazi 
collaborator who operated in Paris during 
the German occupation, and then to Hans 
Fankhauser, a Swiss dealer, reportedly 
notorious for handling Nazi art loot. 
(Swiss laws on property are markedly 
different from many countries, in that good 
title can be transferred to a new owner 
even if an object is stolen). 
Significantly, the provenance (list of 
ownership) for the Searle Degas, according 
to court papers, mirrors the Gutmann
monotype.
According to court papers, Searle, the 
former chairman of the giant pharmaceutical 
firm, G.D. Searle & Co, acquired Landscape 
with Smokestacks in 1987 for $850,000 
through New York private dealer Margo 
Pollins Schab. Schab, a well-known expert 
in late 19th- and early 20th-century art 
who has sold important Degas monotypes in 
the past, was representing Emile Wolf, a 
major New York collector who reportedly 
acquired the work in 1951 from Fankhauser 
in Basel. Schab, who declined to verify 
that she was involved in the transaction, 
said she had never heard of either Wendland 
or Fankhauser until a month ago and that 
Mr. Wolf "was an absolutely world-class 
collector." Referring to the Degas, Schab 
said, "everybody knew where it was." About 
the monotype and the legal and art-
historical issues involved, Schab 
speculated that "the whole thing is such a 
can of worms, it's going to be impossible 
to sort out." 
The elderly and frail Wolf, through a 
caretaker at his residence, declined 
comment. 
One issue the jury may rule on--if the case 
goes that far--is whether the Gutmann Degas 
is the same as the Searle Degas. Monotypes, 
by nature, are unique works. but many 
artists make more than a single impression 
from the oil-based metal plate. Degas used 
this process and then added varying amounts 
of pastel to the image, sometimes totally 
obscuring the monotype base. So far, there 
is only one known Landscape with 
Smokestacks recorded and illustrated in 
P.A. Lemoisne's exhaustive catalogue 
raisonné published in 1946 and in Eugenia 
P. Janis' Degas Monotypes: Essay, Catalogue 
and Checklist, published in 1968 on the 
occasion of the exhibition at the Fogg 
Museum in Cambridge, Mass. The 
Goodmans/Gutmanns were apparently unaware 
of both of these important art historical 
volumes, which are literally bibles to the 
trade. "Even if it is the same monotype, 
which we don't know yet," said one member 
of the defense team, "they (the Goodmans) 
couldn't have been looking too hard for 
it."
One of the crucial issues on property 
claims involve the legal concept of "due 
diligence," which requires that the 
aggrieved owner make a demand for return of 
his or her property in a timely fashion. It 
was only last December, shortly after the 
Goodman brothers and their aunt discovered 
the catalogue entry for the Searle Degas in 
the Kendall catalogue, that they queried 
Searle by letter and demanded the pastel's return. 
Searle, through his attorneys, refused the 
family's demand later that month, which set 
the stage for the lawsuit. 
The fact that the plaintiffs did not file 
the suit until this year could be a factor 
in the case. "The diligence of the victim 
does not have to be perfect," said attorney 
Klein, "it's only required to be 
reasonable. They did what a victim ought to 
do."
Judd Tully covers the international art
market for a variety of publications,
includingArt & Auction to The
Washington Post.