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Three universities in Montreal and Jerusalem protested Wednesday the upcoming sale by a German auctioneer of two paintings once owned by a Jewish art dealer allegedly forced by Nazis to liquidate his collection.
The Van Ham auction house in Cologne announced plans to sell the artworks by Dutch Baroque painter Mathijs Naiveu (1647-1721) on behalf of a German client on Friday, despite objections by Concordia and McGill universities in Montreal, and Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Late Jewish art dealer Max Stern, who fled Germany in 1937 and later settled in Montreal, bequeathed his collection, including Naiveu's "Market Scene in the Piazza Navona, Rome" (1691) and "Market Scene in the Piazza del Quirinale, Rome" (1698), to the universities, Concordia spokesman Clarence Epstein said.
"This blatant refusal to acknowledge the forced sale that took place during the Nazi era is especially distressing," he said.
Sotheby's in Amsterdam had previously refused to auction off the two paintings over concerns about their true ownership, he said.
Stern had purportedly sold his art collection at dirt cheap prices "under duress" by Nazis before fleeing Germany with only a suitcase in hand, Epstein explained.
The Lost Art Registry, the world's largest private international database of lost and stolen art, based in London, tracked down the two Naiveu paintings and advised the universities of their pending sale.
There are presently more than 250 Stern works listed on the registry's database. His estate recovered the first of them last month, a work by Emile Lecomte-Vernet (1821-1900).
amc/ksb
Canada-Germany-art-justice
AFP 151948 GMT 11 06
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