Paris: Two paintings by Renoir and Sisley, stolen by the Nazis, returned to the family of a
Jewish gallery owner
These two treasures, looted by the Nazis during the Second World War, were returned on Thursday during a ceremony to the heirs of the Jewish gallery owner Grégoire Schusterman The "Caryatids", a painting by Auguste Renoir in 1909, is one of the two works returned to Grégoire Schusterman's family on Thursday. On Thursday, during a restitution ceremony, presided over by the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, two famous paintings, painted by Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley, were handed over to the family of Grégoire Schusterman,Jewish gallery owner, despoiled by the Nazis during the Occupation. It is Renoir's "Caryatids", representing two naked women in an Art Deco style, painted in 1909 and which is a variant of other decorative panels, two of which belong to the Barnes collection in the United States. The gallery owner had acquired it at auction in 1939. The second painting, entitled "The Barges", was painted in 1870 by the British Alfred Sisley and depicts a Normandy port in which barges are moored. "A duty to remember" "Today, we are making reparations," said Rachida Dati, retracing the journey of Grégoire Schusterman, born in Ukraine, who opened his gallery in Paris in 1933 and was the victim of a "double injustice": the "spoliation of his treasures" and the rejection "of all his claims for compensation after the war". "It is a duty of memory and
justice that is fulfilled after almost a century," "If this work is now complete, it owes it to people whose contribution has been fundamental," added this nephew of Grégoire Schusterman in public.
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