‘Decision to do this secretly is surprising’: NGV returns painting lost in Nazi era to Jewish family | National Gallery of Victoria (NGV)

The National Gallery of Victoria has quietly returned a 17th-century painting to the descendants of a Jewish family who lost it during the Nazi era, without public notice or explanation.

Gerard ter Borch’s painting Woman with a Fan was removed from the NGV’s website at the beginning of September. The only public sign of his return appeared in an update weeks later. Lost Art Database in Germany.

The museum’s refusal to answer key questions about the decision prompted Jason Schulman, the New York-based researcher who broke the story, to object to the NGV’s handling of the case.

“When a painting is returned to a family who had to be separated from it because of the Nazi regime, I think it’s a good thing,” Schulman told Guardian Australia. “But I think there are questions that need to be made public about how and why the NGV did this.”

The museum did not say what new evidence the family claiming to own the painting had presented or why the case was being handled specifically at a time when an earlier restoration in 2014 was highly publicized by the museum.

Schulman, who received a Fulbright Scholarship in Australia in 2025 and spent years studying artworks potentially looted by the Nazis, said he had followed the fate of the Borch work since the grandchildren of German-Swiss businessman Max Emden laid claim to the painting in the early 2000s.

“It had been in the news for 20 years,” he said. “I spent a lot of time investigating. And suddenly it disappeared.”

What Schulman revealed was a complex, decades-long dispute between two branches of the same family and a museum that this time chose to remain silent, despite past commitments to transparency.

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NGV purchased Lady with a Fan in 1945 for £4,000. In the early 2000s, the Emden family approached the museum, claiming that the work had once belonged to their grandfather Max. His claims were based on family memory and a listing on the NGV origin website that included the name “Martin Bromberg,” a relative of Emden. In 2004, the family contacted the museum to correct a typo on the site that read “Grunden” instead of “Enden”. Schulman said NGV made the change.

However, in 2006, the museum rejected Emden’s ownership claim due to lack of concrete evidence.

“They couldn’t prove that the painting was stolen,” Schulman said. “There were no photographs, no documents.”

In 2022, the Emdens hired Swiss lawyer Olaf Ossmann, known for his role in the 2014 NGV extradition case involving the controversial Van Gogh. Around the same time, the Bromberg family, cousins ​​of the Emden family, also laid claim to the painting.

Earlier this year Ossmann and the Emdens dropped their claims to NGV. In an email to the Guardian, Ossmann said the family accepted evidence that Max Emden hid property belonging to Henry and Hertha Bromberg in order to get the painting out of Germany.

Schulman said that as a Swiss citizen, Emden could export his paintings out of Germany, while his German Jewish cousin would face export restrictions and duties.

The Brombergs have successfully recovered other works in recent years, including a work attributed to Joos van Cleve from France in 2016 and a work attributed to Lucas Cranach from the Allentown Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, in 2024.

In the case of the latter, although both parties agreed that the painting was sold to help Henry and Hertha escape Nazi persecution, they disagreed on the timing; While Bromberg’s heirs believe this happened before the couple fled Germany, the museum’s lawyer claims it happened afterwards. Guided by the Principles of the Washington Conference on Nazi Confiscated Art, both parties agreed to sell the work and share the proceeds.

Both cases widely publicized by the relevant museums and, in the case of Van Cleve, Henry Bromberg’s grandchildren, Christopher Bromberg and Henrietta Schubert, Photo courtesy of the New York Times next to the recovered painting.

However, in the Ter Borch case in Australia, both the family and the NGV kept information to a minimum.

The Bromberg family released the following statement to the Guardian through their Berlin-based legal representative, Imke Gielen.

“We are pleased to have identified another work of art from our grandparents’ collection,” the statement said.

“We are confident that the National Gallery of Victoria has carefully checked the provenance of Gerard ter Borch’s Woman with a Fan and the circumstances under which Henry and Herta Bromberg were forced to part with the painting during the Nazi period, which led to its return.”

The NGV confirmed the return of the painting in a brief written statement.

“After a thorough assessment of the background and provenance of the painting, the NGV determined that the work belonged to Dr Henry Bromberg and was subject to a compulsory sale in the late 1930s, and that Dr Bromberg’s heirs were the true owners of the painting,” the statement said.

“The painting was subsequently removed from the NGV Collection in 2025 and returned to the Bromberg family.”

Despite the pushback, Schulman said the NGV’s handling of the case raised wider concerns, which the Guardian forwarded to the NGV but did not receive a response from.

Schulman declined to disclose the new evidence the Brombergs presented to prove ownership, saying it was impossible to say whether NGV would have had to enter into a sale and division agreement similar to the Allentown case involving the Cranach painting, rather than delivering the artwork directly to the family under Washington Treaty rules.

“Given how similar the paths of Cranach and ter Borch are, it is surprising that the NGV does not feel the same uncertainty,” he said.

Acquired by Christie’s London in 2012 Record price for a work by BorchA glass of lemonade sold at auction for 1 million 273 thousand 250 pounds.

Equally puzzling was the NGV’s decision to handle the disposal privately, Schulman said, when it was made public in 2014 when a work attributed to Van Gogh was returned to a Jewish family.

“The decision to do this secretly is surprising,” Schulman said.

“There have certainly been cases where a museum has secretly returned a painting, but this is usually at the request of the family.

“I think the fact that the Brombergs were willing to appear in the news last year on the Cranach case suggests that the decision to do this came quietly from the museum.”

The NGV also declined to say whether it had examined other potentially problematic works from the second world war period in its collection.