The Art Loss Register (ALR) has announced that it ended January with a total of eight recovery cases resolved. Three of the eight artworks that were recovered were stolen during the Second World War.
The works that are now resolved cases include paintings, a drawing, a marble statue, and a decorative ivory carving.
The painting Still Life of Roses (1706) by Willem Frederik van Royen was looted by Nazis from the Märkisches Museum in Berlin during the Second World War. The work was painted when the artist was working in Berlin as the court painter to Frederick I.
The ALR discovered the painting when it surfaced at a UK auction house, and subsequently informed the Berlin museum, where a settlement was reached between the auction house and museum. The painting has now been returned to the museum, where it’s been on public display since January.
Another case includes the 16th-century Neapolitan school marble statue of St John the Baptist, which was stolen in 1977 from the Church of San Giovanni in Naples.
In autumn 2015, a search request was sent out to the ALR to for the white Carrara marble statue by a Belgian who had recently bought the statue from an Italian dealer. After contacting the Carabinieri, the statue was sent back to the church by both the Carabinieri and the Ambassador of Italy.
The resolved cases also include contemporary artworks, like a contemporary Chinese ink painting lost in spring 2010.
The painting was lost en route in the US, but after discovering it at a Hong Kong auction, the ALR was able to secure the painting’s proceeds of sale back to the rightful owner. According to its vendor, the owner of an artists’ space, the painting just turned up there one day. After the space’s closure, the vendor decided to sell the painting at the Hong Kong auction, where it was found by the ALR.